Drawing Prompts for Kids, Adults, and Teens - Drawings Of... (2024)

1

Do Octopus Art

Learn different methods to sketch an octopus, and ways to shade it to highlight the shadows and tentacles. Oh, and there's a rainbow cephalopod, too!

2

Make a Mushroom Cute

What could be better than a fun fungus? Check out these instructions for cute mushroom drawings by two different methods.

3

Draw the Wind

Here are several different ways to draw the wind, including personifying it into a wind princess! There are also cute methods to sketch trees and clouds blowing with the air gusts.

4

Enjoy Everyday Symbols

Using this treble clef symbol exploration as a model, investigate what other common symbols make for hidden art!

5

Personify an Umbrella

Add big eyes and a smile to a brightly-colored umbrella, and wow is it sweet-looking! See the full tutorial here.

6

Make a Cute Snail

Snails are so cute! But beware: I made a big mistake in my snail drawings about the accurate placement of the eyes. Click through to decide for yourself whether you want to err on the side of biology or adorable-ness.

7

Do Rainbow Drawings

Sure, you can do a classic drawing of a rainbow (with the arc and clouds on either side), but what are other ways to play with ROY-G-BIV? See four prompts here.

8

Sketch a Sea Urchin

So spiky but so sweet: Learn how to create a sea urchin here -- plus shocking facts about where urchin eyes and mouths actually are.

9

Mix Colors

I'm over 40 years old, but I realized with a shock this year that I didn't know the answer to what certain colors (such as orange and green) made when mixed. Check out this color mixing chart for prompts on hues to swirl together.

10

Use Math or Science Symbols

Pick a math or science symbol and turn it into fun cartoons! In this example, below, I've used Pi (3.14...) to become a queen, snake, apple, and more! Bonus for puns.

11

Delight in Mermaid Tails

See the many ways to draw and color mermaid scales on tails, and see which ones you can create!

12

Illustrate Suspense

Suspense is when there's an exciting -- and sometimes scary -- wait right before finding out what will happen next. Here's the challenge: Can you illustrate a suspenseful moment, where the viewer of your drawing is intrigued about what will happen next, but forced to wait in anticipation, without learning the answer yet?

13

Draw Irony

Ok, the English teacher in me is clearly coming out here, but it's still a good prompt: Can you illustrate a moment that is ironic? Irony is defined as when something is the opposite of what you'd expect: for example, a fire station burning down. Click through for more ideas of ironic instances.

14

Go Hair Wild

What's the most over-the-top hairstyle you can draw? Go wild with it!

15

Sketch a Spelling Trick

Is there a word you know always gets spelled wrong? See if you can create an illustration to help remember the correct word order! Here's my example with the tricky word "separate."

16

Create Cute Animal Drawings

Get the full round-up of all of my tutorials for making cute animal drawings here,

17

Contrast Figurative vs. Literal

It can be very funny to juxtapose the literal and figurative version of a phrase; for example: "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse!" Learn more about how to do this in the link below.

18

Cute Food Drawings

See my big round-up of cute food drawings here, including how to sketch a pumpkin, broccoli, pear, and more. Yum!

19

Make Onomatopoeia Cartoons

Onomatopoeia is the term for "sound effect words" like "POW!" For this prompt, see what cartoons you can draw, interspersing the big noise letters around the sketch, as shown in my example below.

20

Hat Drawing Challenge

How many different kinds of hats can you sketch? Can you make up a whole new kind of head covering -- plus a story about what it's for? Exciting!

21

Create Holiday Art

There's always a holiday or festival on the horizon, so why not sketch some art to decorate for it, or make cards for others? Here are a bunch of ideas for nearly every month of the year.