10 Best Drawing Ideas For Children Incl. FREE Drawing Activity Pack
October is the month of The Big Draw Festival! So we’ve rounded-up the best drawing ideas for children from across the web to inspire you!
First we’ll have a quick recap what The Big Draw festival is and why drawing is good for children. Then we’ll get into the fun stuff! 10 fun drawing ideas for children…
- Drawing games
- Get hands on!
- Step-by-step tutorials
- Fun portrait ideas
- Recreate famous drawings
- Drawing challenges
- Colour with texture
- Drawing prompts
- Take inspiration from your surroundings
- Claim your FREE drawing activity pack!
What is the Big Draw Festival?
The Big Draw Festival is a yearly worldwide event to celebrate drawing! It is run by The Big Draw Charity “a pioneering visual literacy charity dedicated to raising the profile of drawing as a tool for wellbeing, thought, creativity, social and cultural engagement. “
The Big Draw theme for 2023 is #DrawingwithSenses, encouraging us to explore the way we process the world through our senses. So get creative and experiment with how drawing can call on your senses of touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell.
Search for an event near you!
Why is drawing good for children?
Drawing is an important life skill to learn, helpful in all subject areas and indeed all aspects of life – not just for art lessons!
Drawing is good for the brain and even improves children’s writing!
Physically, drawing helps children to develop their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Mentally, learning to draw improves children’s concentration and patience. Drawing is a mindful exercise that encourages observation and focus, which is great for mental wellbeing and reducing anxiety.
Drawing also opens up a whole new communication channel for children, a way to visualise and conceptualise their thoughts, feelings and ideas. Something that will be useful in all aspects of their education and life.
Hopefully we have now sold you on the incredible benefits of drawing! So it’s time to get to the fun bit…
10 best drawing ideas for children
Drawing is hard! Children can sometimes get frustrated by their ability to draw “well”. It’s important to help them to understand and appreciate the joy of the process. Also that drawing is very subjective and there are many versions of drawing “well”! Have FUN with these drawing activities!
1. Drawing games!
Silly drawing games are a great way to get children engaged!
In this one, person A draws something on person B’s back and person B has to try to mimic what they think is being drawn…
And in this one you use a dice to decide what each part of a drawing should look like. You could make your own crib sheet for any creature or scene you like!…
2. Get hands on!
Children can learn how to draw simple shapes with the help of their own hands! Here’s a few hand drawing examples.
3. Follow a step-by-step tutorial of an interest
What are your child’s likes and interests – do they like horses, robots, mermaids or aliens? Whatever your child’s interest there will be step by step tutorial available on the web e.g. How to draw an owl
And there will be a You Tube tutorial for it! You can even draw Busy things characters!…
4. Fun portraits
This is a fun one! Place some clear plastic in front of someone’s face and trace their features to create a portrait. Children could do their own face, using a chalk pen or wipe-clean pen on a mirror!
Or why not go for a whole body self portrait! They could decorate around it with things that they think makes them who they are.
5. Recreate a famous drawing/painting
Start by finding a piece of art that they like and research the artist together. Observe their style and discuss what makes their work specific to them. Experiment to see if they can replicate it.
Pointillism is a great place to start…
We have a great ‘Make a masterpiece’ tool on Busy Things to help you explore this further! Children can use special paint tools to magically recreate the brush strokes and techniques used by modern masters such as Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, Warhol and more!
6. Drawing challenge! How many things can you make from a shape?
Choose a shape and see how many things you can make out of it!
Or to reframe the challenge – how many different ways can you draw a… e.g. tree?
7. Colour with texture
Instead of block colouring a picture, use lines and patterns to experiment with drawing textures!
8. Drawing prompts
Mind gone blank? A google search for ‘drawing prompts’ will provide endless ideas for things to draw! There is even an art prompt generator.
Once you’ve got your prompts you could…
- Print and put them in a pot to pick at random and have a draw off!
- Or have a classic game of Pictionary – who can guess what you’re drawing?
9. Take inspiration from your surroundings
Look at what’s around you – your house, a fruit bowl, favourite teddy or toy, the clouds in the sky – have a go at drawing them! Study their characteristics – their texture, shadows they create, their size and relationship to other objects.
Perhaps the family could all have a go at observational drawing! All draw the same thing and compare and contrast how you’ve captured things differently. Have you noticed different things about your subject?
10. Free Drawing Activity Pack for kids
Last but definitely not least is our Free Drawing activity pack that we’ve made to celebrate The Big Draw festival! Packed with fun activities to get children drawing!
Simply click on the button below, download and print out your PDF…
Lots more drawing fun on Busy Things!
We really LOVE drawing and art at Busy Things! From beautiful and funny mark-marking games in Early Years to painting like Picasso in Key Stages 1 and 2 there is a lot to explore! If you’re a Busy Things subscriber – Log in now and get stuck in!
Not a Busy Things subscriber? You can access them all free! Busy Thing is trusted by thousands of schools and families to make learning fun! Take a free trial to access all our drawing and art resources plus 100s more games and activities across the curriculum! Simply click here to take your free Busy Things trial
We hope our drawing ideas for children have been useful and you are now feeling inspired to reach for the pencil crayons!
We’d love to know what drawing you get up to – please do let us know in the comments.