Drawing Ideas for Older Children

Art teachers why not give these ideas a try. Art lessons are always exciting and stimulating.

What is Successful Drawing?

Successful drawing is essentially about confidence, perseverance and developing drawing skills. All of which are greatly influenced by a student’s attitude to what you produce. I taught lots of students who could draw, but would under-estimate their abilities. They were dismissive of their work, or they lacked the confidence to see the value in their own work. If you are teaching someone like this show them the video, ‘How to be Brilliant at Drawing’ .

Try to get your students to think and work like this

Ask yourself this, why do you draw? Do you simply enjoy the process, want to reproduce what you see, or create something imaginative? Imagine thinking that every line or mark you produce is precious – so no rubbing out – that every image you create is part of you – your baby. Or that your drawings are a record of your development or journey through life. Imagine a world in which there are no preconceived ideas about how things should look, a world where your drawings are valued simply because you produced them. How enjoyable it would be to create drawings in such a world. That world can exist inside of you – it is just a matter of confidence.

You become ‘good’ at drawing simply by drawing. Get a sketch book, a pencil, piece of graphite, charcoal, whatever takes your fancy, and draw. Here are a few drawing ideas you might try to get started:

1. Set time limits – complete a sketch in a maximum of 2 minutes, but don’t start by drawing an outline, start in an unusual place, for example, start at the bottom and work up, or the middle and work out.

2. Where you would normally use a single line to create something use two and vary the lines, so one might be dark and the other light.

3. Drawing with sticks Hold the pencil as far from the tip as possible so you have less control, or tie the pencil to a stick and use that. Enjoy the fact you have less control and marvel at the quality of line you produce. Checkout this video for a demonstration of drawing with sticks

4. Look at an object or scene for a couple of minutes and try to memorise it. turn away and sketch very quickly what you remember.

5. Set up a group of interesting objects to draw. With the objects in front of you, draw very carefully everything you can see around and through the objects, but do not draw the objects themselves.

6. Get hold of a very large sheet of paper and a very large felt pen, huge piece of charcoal, or very large paintbrush. Find a small interesting object. Draw the object as large as possible and in as much detail as possible. It’s a great exercise.

Finally, encourage students to take a sketchbook with them everywhere they go. Draw anything, even if it is just a 10 seconds doodle. Remember everything they create is precious. More Drawing Ideas