239+ Small Easy Drawing Ideas with Guides for All Ages

Are you looking for small easy drawing ideas to use in school or just for fun? Our mega list of FREE drawing packs has tons of options for all ages to try!

School Lesson Drawing Benefits

Our twin daughters loved the opportunity to draw when we homeschooled and I found there were a lot of benefits to adding it into our lessons. One benefit I found was that creating a picture from a homeschool lesson helped our girls remember important information.

Approximately 50 percent or more of our brain is devoted to interpreting visual information. So, for example, something as simple as drawing cat ears, whiskers and a tail on the letter C could help a younger child remember that cat starts with the letter C.

Drawing can also help your older students share information in a presentation or report. It can make note-taking easier for those struggling with dyslexia or other reading issues.

But probably the best reason to intentionally add drawing time into your schoolwork is because it can just be fun and allows kids to express themselves in a creative way. And who doesn’t need more fun, right?

If you’d like to learn more about how drawing can be a powerful learning tool, then we recommend checking out this article on Edutopia.

What is Guided Drawing?

A guided drawing simply has an image on a grid to help a beginner copy it. Rather than trying to freehand the whole image, a grid breaks the image into smaller sections and gives the artist a simple guide to follow.

We have added drawing resources from throughout our site onto this HSG Hub Page to give your kids & teens a huge variety of images to try. The majority are guided drawing packs that also have a mini lesson plus a comprehension page/quiz. These can be the perfect complement to a larger lesson or used as a mini unit study.

We currently have 239+ drawing ideas for you to explore so you never run out of ideas. Use the table of contents below to jump to a specific section or keep scrolling to read about all of them. Most of the options below are guided drawings created for HSG readers by one of our fantastic contributors, Bonnie Rose. If you like this type of printable then we invite you to check out more of her awesome printables at WriteBonnieRose.

Animal Drawing Ideas

It seems all kids love animals so we decided to start our easy drawing ideas list with them. With 43 guided drawing templates & 1 paper plate drawing pattern in 5 packs plus an additional 85 drawing ideas in our cats & dogs notebook units, your kids & teens will have plenty to chose from.

5 Animal Guided Drawing Units

1. Amphibians and Reptiles aren’t usually described as cute animals but kids of all ages are interested in them. This 24-page printable will help your students learn about 10 and give them an opportunity to draw them using a grid as a guide. Animals included are an alligator, crocodile, desert tortoise, Gila monster, horned lizard, iguana, newt, sea turtle, strawberry poison dart frog and a tiger salamander.

2. Australian animals can give your child creative ideas to expand their drawing skills. For those who love a teddy bear then a koala or quokka can be a fun option to try. This printable will allow them to learn and draw 10 animals including a black swan, cassowary, echidna, emu, kangaroo, kookaburra, platypus, wombat, koala & quokka.

3. Crabs can be really easy to draw if kids start with a round shape. Our crab craft printable is perfect for beginning artists with 3 crabs on a grid that have different degrees of difficulty. Also included is a page with a step by step guide on how to draw a paper plate crab.

4. Fish come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and colors. They also let young artists use simple shapes to create a cute easy drawing of a fish while also allowing more skilled artists to design complex creatures. Grab the pack below to use grids to draw 10 different types of fish including anglerfish, bass, blue tang, butterflyfish, clownfish, parrotfish, swordfish, trout, trumpetfish and tuna.

5. Mammals are another category to find large and small drawing ideas for your homeschooling lessons. In this unit, kids can learn about 10 mammals all while practicing their artistic skills. The mammals included are American black bear, bison, blue whale, camel, chimpanzee, deer, elk, koala, rabbit and wolf.

2 Animal Notebook Units

1. Cat lovers can use this notebook template to research and learn about 30 different cat breeds. Included is a place on each page to draw each different cat breed. This type of drawing option will give kids the freedom to create complex or simple drawings depending on their skill level.

2. Dogs are the most popular pet in the US according to Forbes with 65 million homes having a dog. It’s no surprise to me as they are faithful friends that bring joy into our lives. They also come in all different shapes and sizes making them a perfect idea to draw. If you need an easy drawing idea for school, then we recommend dogs.

Our dog notebook template will give kids a chance to investigate 55 different breeds plus room to create complex or simple drawings of each one. An excellent way to add variety to such a popular subject is to challenge your kids to add a background to each dog such as a sandy beach, family campground, or even on a pirate ship!

Bible Drawing Ideas

Bible Story drawing prompts can be a great way to expand Bible lessons beyond writing or scripture memory. The printable below has 10 drawing ideas taken from well-known Bible stories including a dove, Tower of Babel, Jacob’s ladder, Ten Commandments, Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, crown, cross (for Savior), ship and Heaven.

Christmas & Other Holiday Drawing Ideas

Christmas and other holidays can create an almost endless supply of cute, easy drawing ideas to expand hand-eye coordination or just put you in the holiday spirit. We’ve put our own twist on the holidays with our Christmas Food around the World Guided Drawing pack.

Kids can combine geography, drawing and maybe even a little cooking/baking when they learn about 10 foods including: bûche de Noël (France), chapattis and nyama choma (Kenya), Christmas cake (Ireland), kahk (Egypt), kutya (Russia), puto bumbóng (Philippines), rabanada (Brazil), roast turkey and vegetables (England), stollen (Germany) and Three Kings Cake (Mexico).

Community Helper Drawing Ideas

Community helpers are favorite characters for so many kids and are another option to get the creative juices flowing the next time you need a drawing idea. Encourage younger kids to draw their favorite community helper with basic features such as a uniform and a smiley face. But more experienced artists could try their hand at caricature.

While it may not be as easy it can be fun to exaggerate facial features with a small nose, a long neck, and huge ears for example. There are tons of books and videos to help learn more about caricature. One book we recommend is The Mad Art of Caricature!: A Serious Guide to Drawing Funny Faces from Tom Richmond – winner of the 2012 Reuben Award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” from the National Cartoonists Society.

Community helper drawing ideas can also include the everyday objects they may need to do their job. Our free guided drawing has 10 items that an astronaut, dentist, farmer, firefighter, hair stylist, lifeguard, mechanic, police officer, postal worker and scientist need to do their work.

History & Geography Drawing Ideas

History and geography are subject areas where even more drawing ideas can come from. Below is our list of 6 different packs with 60 guided drawing ideas for you to use in your studies:

11. The American Revolution was an exciting time in our history but it can feel like a long time ago and learning dates can make it feel dull at times. Having your kids add their own simple drawings of weapons, tools, and people can be a way to add variety into their lessons.

Our pack below includes easy drawings of 10 figures from the American Revolution including Samuel Adam, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Armistead Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette, Rufus Putnam, Haym Salomon, George Washington and Martha Washington. Students can use them to enhance their notebooking journals, reports or presentations.

12. Ancient Egypt is one of my favorite periods of history to study and can be for a lot of kids as well. There are a number of easy things that can be drawn from that time period that have simple shapes and straight lines such as the pyramids and all the letters in the hieroglyphic alphabet. Our free drawings are a little more complex but still very doable with the guides. They include a canopic jar, chariot, hieroglyphic tablet, mummy, Nefertiti, obelisk, papyrus, pharaoh, sarcophagus and a scribe.

13. Aztec, Inca & Maya civilizations are another place to get simple drawing ideas if you like ancient history. Our  FREE unit gives students the chance to learn about these three empires, where they were located, and the everyday lives of the people who lived there. The 10 guided drawings include a map of the Aztec empire, Aztec house, quetzal, map of the Inca empire, llama, Inca stonework, map of the Mayan empire, Mayan man, Mayan pottery & a Mayan ballcourt.

14. Famous Explorers from history can bring you even more drawing ideas to add to book reports or help your students expand their drawing skills from beyond the basic techniques to more advanced skills. In fact, you may find that art supplies, books or courses could end up on a birthday or Christmas list as your artists develop their skills.

Our explorers guided drawing printable below will continue to encourage that development by giving you simple free portraits of Jim Bridger, Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, John Charles Frémont, Henry Hudson, Zebulon Pike, Sir Walter Raleigh, La Salle, Sacagawea & John Smith.

15. Different Homes around the world can add creativity to your social studies and geography lessons in addition to giving your kids more drawing ideas. It seems all children love to draw easy things like a square house but homes can look very different in other counties and from other time periods. This drawing unit will help kids learn about other homes which may encourage them to try something new the next time they decide to draw a house. Homes included in this unit are a chickee (Seminole), Dutch floating home (Dutch), tukul (Ethiopia), goahti (Sami), izba (Russia), Lake Titicaca reed house (Uru), pubelo (Pueblo), Tudor (English), Viking longhouse (Viking) and a yurt (Mongol) .

Music Drawing Ideas

Musical Instruments can be another great idea when you’d like your older kids & teens to go on a creative journey. Learn about 10 instruments from different countries around the world and how they are played. Then use the grid drawing opportunities to draw a balalaika, crwth, gandingan, Hulusi, khene, kokle, pandeiro, saron, thavil and a volynka.

Science Drawing Ideas

Science is another subject area where a vast variety of drawing ideas can be found. Here are 7 printable packs with an additional 70 guided drawing ideas to explore.

18. Clouds are one of the best easy drawing ideas out there because it can all start from a small oval shape. A fluffy cloud is probably the most common type that comes to mind and lots of kids have spent hours finding pictures such as a dog, cat, ice cream cone or even a hot air balloon in that kind.

There are more types of clouds, however, so we recommend the printable below to help you add more variety while also enhancing any weather lessons you may have in your science curriculum. Cloud drawings include cirrus, cumulus, stratus, altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, cumulonimbus, nimbostratus, and stratocumulus clouds.

19. Electricity is an invention that fascinates a lot of kids and is great for hand-on learning and experiments. If you to help your students learn how electricity works or prove understanding on a test consider having them draw the components of a circuit in order to get a light bulb to turn on. Our guided drawing unit can help with that as it includes drawings of a battery, circuit, closed circuit, open circuit, open switch, closed switch, circuit breaker, fuse, series circuit, and parallel circuit.

21. The Human Body has been drawn for centuries and is another fantastic drawing idea. While artists normally focus on the human form anyone learning about anatomy or biology could learn to draw simple systems and organs to help learn and retain the information. Grab our FREE body organ unit below to get small drawing guides for the heart, lungs, stomach, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine, liver, kidneys, bladder and brain.

22. Landforms are good to learn how to draw as they can add interest detail to any landscape picture. And for students taking any type of earth science class drawing the different landforms can add a creative element to the lessons. Landforms in the printable below include a bay, fold mountain, island, isthmus, lake, mesa, peninsula, shield volcano, stratovolcano and valley.

23. Plant life opens up another huge category to find tons of new drawing ideas. According to Wikipedia there are approximately 380,00 known species of plants to choose from for your next art project. In addition to plants, there are other topics around plants to give your child more drawing and learning opportunities.

For example, you might not think about the way plants move, but there actually is a lot of movement to discover. Your kids & teens can draw and learn 13 ways plants move including tropism, geotropism, hydrotropism, phototropism, thigmotropism & seed dispersal methods including: gravity, animal ingestion, animal fur, water, explosion, wind & fire in the guided drawing printable below.

24. Trees are one type of plant to tap for even more drawing ideas with an estimated 73,000 different species to choose from. One great way to combine art and science is to take the time to learn about 10 fascinating trees we have available for you below. The list includes acacia, almond, bald cypress, cashew, coast redwood, coconut palm tree, date palm, eucalyptus, palo verde and spruce.

25. Weather – Do you have a student interested in meteorology as a potential career field? Well, we even have weather related drawing ideas for you beyond clouds and tornadoes. Inside the pages of this printable your child can learn & draw about 10 weather forecasting tools including an anemometer, barograph, barometer, hygrometer, rain gauge, thermometer, thermometer (digital), weather balloon, weather vane and a wind sock.

Story Drawing Ideas

Last but not least in our large list is our story drawing ideas. Kids & teens love to use their imaginations and asking them to draw a person, place, thing or even an event from a story means you’ll never run out of ideas again. To get you started, we have 2 final free printables with 25 drawing options for you:

1. Aesop Fables are the perfect starting place when looking for ideas from stories. We have guided drawings for 10 characters, things and events from the following fables to try including: Belling the Cat, The Crow and the Pitcher, The Dog and His Reflection, The Fox and the Grapes, The Fox and the Stork, The Lion and the Mouse, The Tortoise and the Hare, The Milkmaid and Her Pail, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf plus The Miller, His Son, and Their Donkey.

2. Story Drawing & Writing Prompts – This last pack is slightly different than most of the others. Rather than grid drawing to use as a guide, this pack features 15 ideas with 15 writing prompts. We recommend having your child draw small images into the scene the writing prompt describes and then write about it. The scenes include an attic, grocery store, African savanna, picnic, road trip, baseball game, Christmas Eve, a night at a fireworks show, Uncle Ed’s farm, hidden bay on an undiscovered island, cave, summer day, drive in the country, and a beach vacation

In Conclusion

Small and easy drawings can help your kids and teens learn as well as add a bit of fun into their lessons. These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg so sharpen those pencils and get busy sketching!