The Ultimate List of Drawing Prompts for Kids and Adults
You need drawing prompts, I’ve got them. I could literally sit for days and happily churn out drawing ideas. I so love seeing what people have done with these ideas. The options are endless for what creative brains can create based on one simple drawing idea!
I understand how hard it can be sometimes to conjure up ideas for what to draw. I have heard from teachers, illustrators, homeschoolers, grandmas, and people leading activities in senior living facilities – all happy to have found my drawing prompt lists. Sometimes you just need a simple list of ideas to work through so you can put your precious creative energy into the drawing – instead of the “thinking up”.
If you happen to use any (or all) of these drawing lists, I would love to see your drawings! The easiest way to share is to tag me on Instagram at @artmakespeople. If you aren’t a social media user, email them over.
Drawing Prompt Lists
Each of the lists below corresponds to a post I have written especially for that topic. I wanted an organized hub to compile all the lists to act as a sort of table of contents. Feel free to bookmark this page to refer to any time you need drawing ideas. It would also mean a lot to me if you shared this page with anyone you can think of who might benefit from these.
365 Daily Drawing Prompts
This is my favorite. If you are looking for daily drawing prompts for an entire year, here you go. I wanted to give those looking for a challenge a super-easy way to commit to making a drawing a day for a year. You can start at any time, and there’s no pressure if you miss a day; simply pick up where you left off.
Even just 5 minutes a day of drawing can keep you moving your drawing practice forward – and the beautiful thing with daily sketchbook drawing prompts is that you can interpret them any way you like. So if you hate a prompt for a certain day? Figure out a way to change it into something you actually want to draw. Enjoy your year of drawing!
Silly Drawing Ideas for Kids
These are by no means only for kids. If I weren’t me, and I didn’t think up these fun drawing prompts already, and I was looking for drawing ideas, I would 100% go to these first. There is nothing better than sitting around drawing and cracking yourself up at the same time.
I dreamed up 80 of these bad boys, so you can keep your kids entertained, or yourself, or your entire school… I really love how humor and art can go hand in hand to turn art-making into a creative, fun activity. Silly Drawing Prompts
100 One-Word Drawing Prompts
Sometimes all you need is a word to inspire an idea and get you madly drawing away in your sketchbook. This list is exactly 100 one-word drawing prompts to choose from at random, any time inspiration strikes.
No matter your drawing style or mood, you can use the single word as a literal idea for what to draw, or you can sit with it for a minute and riff on different ideas that spring from the word. This quick drawing prompts list is all about doing exactly what you want to do, and letting your creativity go wild.
Drawing Prompts for Seasons and Holidays
If you are a teacher, an illustrator, or run any kind of drawing workshop, you may at some point have looked for drawing prompts by season. This group of 262 ideas includes not only prompts for Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, but I also cover the major American holidays.
With seasonal creative drawing prompts, you can decide to practice your drawing skills based on a certain object, or you can combine different items and create a seasonal doodle page. These are just 2 ideas out of exactly infinite that you can use for your drawing practice. Holiday drawing prompts come in handy whenever you want to give kids a little help coming up with ideas for items to draw that correspond to most of the big American holidays. Or if you are looking for ideas for your bullet journal. Again, 2 out of infinite ideas. Yay
Surreal Drawing Prompts
If surrealism appeals to you, you may enjoy working through these 20 surreal drawing prompts. I thought it would be fun to provide ideas that were a little beyond the normal prompts for those that don’t want to just plunk down and draw what you see in front of you.
These were fun to compile – they will probably lead to more surreal drawing ideas once you have drawn a few, so feel free to let your imagination go to the weirdest of places to come up with more.
40 Hard Things To Draw
This drawing prompt list is for those ready for a challenge. Push yourself to get better at drawing and you will feel that satisfaction that only comes with putting the work in.
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to draw something, having a vision of how you want it to look, and then having your drawing suck. But the only way to get to the place where what shows up on paper matches what is in your mind (and you can get there), is to draw, draw, and draw some more. Here’s a tip: combine some of these hard drawing prompts with the daily drawing ideas or one-word drawing prompts (above), so you can mix up your drawing practice.
Drawing Ideas For Illustrators
I dream of doling out ideas to illustrators and having them use their beautiful, creative brains to interpret what I’ve dreamt up. If you are an illustrator, or are learning to be one, I hope you will enjoy poking through these drawing prompts for illustrators and bringing some to life on the page or tablet or screen or wherever you draw.
I tried to include a mix of straightforward and pretty ‘out there’ illustration ideas for a good challenge.
Don’t forget to pin this for later!
cover photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash