Art Tools and Ideas
An A2Z Sponsor
Chad Stewart, former Disney animator and homeschool Dad, offers 12 week LIVE – online animation and drawing courses for 11-18 year olds. Weekly classes are one hour long and include personal video reviews for individual learning. You can hold your child’s spot for only $50! Check out the website: theanimcourse.com
Art Lessons
Art Studio Chalkboard
These pages are a resource for artists and art students that focus on the technical fundamentals of perspective, shading, color and painting.
Artist’s Toolkit
Learn about and interact with the elements of art. Create your own artwork.
Arts Education Week: Videos Exploring Style Expressed Though Art
What do you get when you cross cuddly textiles with heavy metal iconography? Punk quilts by Ben Venom. Help students tap into personal interests that can define their artistic style and close out Arts Education Week with our new KQED Art School video.
Destination Modern Art
Interactive Flash lessons from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Drawing Lessons from Toad Hollow
Welcome to my studio. I will be sharing my art, drawing technique and 20+ year’s experience with you on this page. The fantasy art, bird, wildflower, cat, horse and rose drawing lessons were created out of the love of drawing. From Carol Rosinski.

Drawing of me, Ann Zeise, your webmaster
by Jessica C., age 6
of San Francisco.
Created February 2, 2004.
Jessica has a friend who is a cartoonist and is encouraging her to draw. She is also in a drawing class with other homeschoolers.
Free Art Lessons
Free lessons on drawing, perspective, shading, and other techniques for drawing and rendering with various mediums. See also their free art projects. From Masterpiece Art Instruction.
Incredible Art Department
Art lessons by age level, from little kids through grown-ups.
Mark Kistler’s Online Lessons
Online art lessons from the great Mark Kistler!
Art Starters
Nasca Lines
Nasca lines, or geoglyphs, are massive mysterious drawings on the desert plateaus of Peru that have been talked about since the 1920s when airplanes began to fly between Lima and the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa.
Galleries
CyberKids
Publishes original creative work by kids ages 7 to 12, including art, stories, poems, games and puzzles, multimedia.
Pencil Art
Exploring Line Drawing
In this series we will explore composition and line drawing using your favorite subject traced from a photo. I want you to have some instant creative success with this exploration.
Portraits
Figure Drawing Lab
Learn to draw people. This site is devoted to better understanding of the elements that make up the human figure and how to better portray them.
Getting Started in Portrait Art
So, you want to draw and paint portraits, and you want to know where to begin? Here are some things you need to get and do to get started.
Mr. Picassohead
Create a head drawing in the style of Picasso. A very cleverly designed online drawing tool. Email the results to a friend.
Portrait for Kids
Follow the clues and help solve a make-believe mystery! Using your noggin and a special spyglass tool, you’ll uncover hidden layers of the painting and learn fascinating facts about the portrait along the way. Let the sleuthing begin!
Printmaking
Introduction to Printmaking
Printmaking is an art form that allows the artist to transfer an image created from an original source – usually a metal plate, stone or block of wood – to another surface (usually paper).
SketchUp
SketchUp
Mac, Windows. Google software that you can use to create, modify and share 3D models. It’s easier to learn than other 3D modeling programs, which is why so many people are already using it.
Free Stuff for Kids
This page contains some SketchUp activities you can download and do. The models are described in the ModelMetricks or GeomeTricks books, but you don’t need to create the models (or buy the books) to do the activities.
For Teachers: 3DVinci in the Classroom
Question: What do you get when you combine 3DVinci with Google SketchUp? Answer: Students having so much fun, they don’t realize that they’re learning the same design and spatial-relations skills taught to architects, artists, mathematicians, and engineers.
The Sketchup Show
Your complete Google SketchUp video training resource for tips, tricks, interviews and just about everything you ever wanted to learn about SketchUp.
Video Tutorials
If you’re new to building 3D models with Google SketchUp, our video tutorials are a great way to get started. They range from basic to more advanced topics, and are best watched in the order that they are listed.
Software
Tux Paint
Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris. Open source drawing and painting program for children 3 and older. It has a simple, easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who helps guide children as they use the program. Free.
MAC
Paintbrush
Paintbrush is extremely simple – you’ve got a toolbox which allows you to use a paintbrush, rubber, change colors, select an area to fill and little more than that.
Scribbles
If you want to see a simple Paint program that looks modern and makes the best of your Macs graphically capabilities, you can’t go wrong with Scribbles.
You may also like to visit these special “How to Draw” link pages: