The drawing ideas for kids in this post are not  step by step drawing for kids activities. They are a few fun, easy drawing projects that you can give for kids instead of formal drawing lessons or in addition to formal lessons.

In my post drawing for children  is  a discussion about drawing with the Monart method while the link above gives more exact guidelines. Here are just some ideas to get the children drawing creatively without having to worry about following any kinds of patterns.

The first activity is called finish the picture.

Above is an image (that is partly cut off) of some of the beginning marks I would make on a paper to give to the children. When you give children an empty piece of paper and tell them to draw, many of them have no problem with that. There are other children however, that are so used to be told exactly what to draw or fill in in their coloring pages that they get frozen.

This activity allows the children a basis to start the drawing process and they can create anything they want from these initial lines. You can copy the beginning lines onto a paper and if you want to make more than one then just run it off on a copy machine.

These are just demo ideas and you can of course, create your own markings to start them off. You can also decide on the types of writing implements you want to give the children. Markers, crayons, pastels, pencils are all great and you may want to switch off to get the children used to the different media.

Drawing project #2: Abstract masterpieces

The next activity is one  I got straight out of the book  Drawing with Children .I’ve always believed that it’s really helpful for kids to get into many different non realistic artists to show them what real art can be.

Many children in our society today still only believe that you can be a real artist if you draw something realistic. The more you show them artists work like Jackson Pollack, Matisse, Picasso  and others, the more they will start to realize how broad art is.

This is a fun, abstract activity that uses the nice, colorful markers that are used throughout the Monart method.If you can afford it the Prismacolor Professional Art Markers are just delicious. They slide over the paper so beautifully and produce such rich color and they last for a long time.

The way to start off this activity is by collecting all kinds of materials to serve as templates. Below are some that I gathered. You will notice that I also have some shapes that I had that had been cut out of tagboard. You can use store bought templates, you can use stuff from around the house or you can use both.

You can buy protractors, a different kind called a 360 Degree Professional Protractor and a Triangle Set to add to your collection of shapes to make.

After the children started I ended up removing the larger baking pans shown above as  the papers I gave them were not large enough to absorb that design.

Tell the children to use the objects to create designs all over their pictures. They can overlap them as well.

Then have them to color them in. If they rich colored markers as their designs will be much more vivid.The reason I like the markers like the Prismacolor Professional Art Markers is because they are 2 sided and can fill in lots of space with the thick side and small detail with the fine point.

Below are some of the gorgeous drawings the children made.

 One mistake I felt I made was I gave them an object that ended up looking too realistic. They are so fixated on realism that some of them were concentrating too much on this template as a realistic object. The object below is a strange looking scissors  that I have however….

the kids used it as a template they realized it looked like a bird and added it into their design. I really wanted only abstract pieces but, it was to late to remove it once I noticed what they were doing. I was also looking for some shapes to refer you to when looking for the protractors and I noticed some heart shapes. I would avoid those unless its Valentines day.

They really enjoyed this activity and when I tried it another year I did not include that funny shaped scissor and got great results too.(seen below)

 Drawing activity #3: Scribble scrabble shapes

This is really a much simpler version of the activity above and is probably good for younger children as well. You can also extend this activity to become a pasting activity after the cutting.

The children were told to make pictures with a  pen or pencil that were as they call it “scribble scrabble”.

They were then instructed to look for different shapes in their scribble scrabble’s and to outline as many shapes as they could find within their pictures with a marker.

It is a very interesting experience for the children and a new way of seeing shape.

After they did this they colored in their shapes using markers or pastels. They end up making interesting pictures from their shapes. If you want to continue this activity then you can have the children cut out their shapes and collage them onto a separate piece of paper.

So there you have it, 3 great drawing ideas for your children that put no pressure on anyone to create anything representational.