Best Drawing Channels

Stan Prokopenko built Proko into the most comprehensive free resource for figure drawing and anatomy on YouTube — 4.2 million subscribers and a library that covers gesture, proportion, the bean, the robo-bean, muscles, bones, portraiture and everything in between, all with Stan's characteristically clear explanations and dry humour. His videos are produced to a genuinely professional standard and represent an approach to art education that scales from absolute beginners to experienced artists wanting to refine their fundamentals. The channel now hosts tutorials from other leading artists alongside Stan's own, making Proko one of the closest things to a proper art school that YouTube offers for free.

The serious, fundamentals-first approach — anatomy, structure, the figure — is exactly what makes it valuable but can feel dry or daunting if you just want to draw something fun quickly. The deepest material sits behind paid courses that the free videos partly preview, and the figure-drawing focus means less here for, say, landscape or purely digital workflows.

Josiah Brooks is an Australian artist who built his 6.7 million subscriber channel around the principle that art should be entertaining as well as educational. His challenge format — painting with unusual tools, using only three colours, recreating artworks with terrible brushes — has produced some of the most watched art content on YouTube, and his energy and genuine enthusiasm for every medium he tries makes even beginners feel invited in. Draw With Jazza covers traditional media, digital art, animation, character design and product reviews, making it one of the most versatile art channels on the platform.

The challenge-and-entertainment format that drives the channel’s huge numbers prioritises fun over structured teaching, so you absorb ideas and enthusiasm more than a reliable curriculum. It ranges across so many media that it lacks the depth of a specialist channel in any single one, and the high-energy style isn’t for everyone.

Mark Crilley is an American children's book author and manga illustrator whose YouTube channel has been one of the most consistently educational drawing resources on the platform since 2006. With more than 40 published books including the Mastering Manga series and Brody's Ghost, Crilley brings genuine professional expertise to his how-to-draw tutorials on manga faces, realistic portraits, animals, environments and dozens of other subjects. His step-by-step approach is paced carefully enough for beginners while covering enough nuance to be useful for more experienced artists, and his regular uploads over nearly two decades have built an archive of several hundred tutorials.

The step-by-step, follow-along method is excellent for reproducing a specific result but lighter on the underlying ‘why’ than a fundamentals-driven channel, so some students can copy a tutorial without fully grasping the principles. The style also leans heavily toward manga and realistic portraiture, which won’t suit every artistic direction.

Harumichi Shibasaki is a professional watercolour instructor from Japan whose channel has become one of the most widely followed watercolour resources on YouTube. His tutorials cover fundamental techniques — flat wash, gradation, wet-on-wet — as well as complete landscape paintings from start to finish, all delivered with a calm, methodical approach that makes his sometimes complex techniques genuinely accessible to beginners. His painting of trees, mountains and Japanese landscapes has attracted 1.6 million subscribers from around the world, and his ASMR-style silent painting videos — no narration, just brushstrokes and nature sounds — have become some of the most replayed painting videos on the platform.

The calm, demonstration-led format is beautiful but sometimes shows what to do more than it explains why, and the language barrier means narration is limited on some videos. Watercolour is also an unforgiving medium, so beginners can find the gap between watching a serene demo and reproducing it themselves frustrating.

Aaron Blaise spent 21 years at Disney as an animator and supervising animator on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas and Mulan, before co-directing Brother Bear — for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. His YouTube channel is the most accessible window into how a professional Disney-level animator actually thinks about drawing animals, movement and character. His tutorials on drawing wildlife, painting with light and shadow, and the principles of animation are among the most authoritative free art education available online. A channel for anyone serious about drawing animals, creatures or character animation.

The expertise is world-class but pitched at people already somewhat comfortable drawing — complete beginners may find it assumes a foundation they don’t yet have. The focus on animals, creatures and animation is a specialism, so it’s less suited to those wanting portraits, still life or general illustration, and the most in-depth material is paid.

Peter Draws is an American artist who has been documenting his pen and ink drawing practice on YouTube since 2013, building a loyal following around his intricate, meditative doodle work — mandalas, abstract designs, sci-fi landscapes and whatever else happens to interest him that week. His channel sits in a rare space between tutorial and creative practice: he teaches technique but always within the context of actual drawing sessions, which makes his content both instructional and genuinely enjoyable to watch. His tutorials on pen and ink shading basics have been viewed millions of times, and his relaxed, honest approach to the creative process has made him one of the most trusted voices in traditional drawing on YouTube.

This sits closer to creative practice than structured instruction — you’ll be inspired to pick up a pen, but you won’t get a curriculum or clear skill progression. The meditative, free-association doodling style and pen-and-ink focus are a specific taste, and viewers wanting concrete how-to lessons may find it too loose.

Rin — known as DrawingWiffWaffles — is an American illustrator and YouTuber who has built one of the most enthusiastic communities in art YouTube around sketchbook tours, illustration challenges, art supply reviews and honest reflections on the realities of being a working artist. Her channel covers a wide range of media including coloured pencils, markers, watercolour and digital, and her willingness to show messy process work, failed experiments and genuine struggle alongside finished pieces makes her content unusually relatable. With 3.4 million subscribers and a consistently warm and encouraging approach to art education, DrawingWiffWaffles is one of the most accessible entry points into the art YouTube community.

The strengths — sketchbook tours, supply reviews, honest process — make it relatable and community-driven rather than a place for rigorous technique instruction. The heavy focus on art supplies and hauls is enjoyable but won’t directly improve your skills, so it’s best paired with a fundamentals channel.

Florent Farges is a French painter who goes by FASO and specialises in hyper-realistic oil portraits and still lifes painted in the tradition of the Old Masters — Rembrandt, Vermeer and Caravaggio being the clear reference points. His timelapse and real-time painting videos are among the most technically impressive art demonstrations available on YouTube, and his explanations of how he builds up tonal values, blends colour and achieves photorealistic skin tones are both mesmerising to watch and genuinely educational. His channel is smaller than the others on this list — around 650,000 subscribers — but represents some of the highest-quality traditional oil painting content on YouTube.

The Old-Master oil realism is stunning but genuinely advanced — the techniques, materials and patience involved put much of it well beyond a beginner’s reach. Oils are also a slow, equipment-heavy medium, so this is a channel to grow into rather than start with, and the smaller library reflects its specialist niche.