Drawing is a great way to engage students in creativity-promoting activities in which students experiment with various ways of meaning making processes. There are several free drawing tools that you can  with students in class. Below is a collection of some of the best student-friendly drawing tools to try out. For Chromebook users, check out this collection of Chromebook drawing tools. You can also check drawing apps for kids and best sketching websites for students.




1. AutoDraw

AutoDraw is a web-based drawing website where you can have fun creating drawings. You can draw solo with the Draw tool or use the Shape tool to make shapes. You can then select colors using the color picker and insert text using the Type tool. Use the Select tool to resize, move, and rotate your drawings. Once your drawing is ready, you can easily download it as a PNG or share it with others.

2. QuickDraw

QuickDraw is a drawing game built with machine learning. The game is part of Google’s A.I. experiments. The way it works is simple: you draw and the computer uses machine learning to guess your drawing. The tool is already trained on a few hundred concepts but the more you draw on it the more it learns.



3. Let’s Draw

Let’s Draw is another good drawing website to use with students in school. The site and the accompanying app offer various drawing games and tutorials to help students of all skill level learn and develop their drawing skills. For instance, in the How to Draw section, users learn how to draw different shapes and objects through guided video tutorials and help from other users of the site. The Simple Draw game is a drawing and animation editor where students can draw fun things to save as picture or SVG animation. Let’s Draw also offers a number of engaging multiplayer games including Guess n Draw Draw Best, and Finish It.

4. Brush Ninja

Brush Ninja is an animated GIF maker that is suitable for kids and students of all ages. Using the platform’s integrated tools (e.g., brushes, colours, marker, pencil, etc), students can draw their own animations, turn them into animated GIFs and share them with others. The process is simple and easy and does not require any log-in or software download.




5. Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint is both a painting and an image editing application. Some of the features it offers include: a wide range of layers, 20 filters and effects (e.g., blur, distort, pixelate, sharpen, threshold, posterize, etc), painting tools (e.g., over 300 brushes), saturation tools, selection tools (e.g., lasso, magic wand, elliptical selections, etc), image enhancement tools, and more.

6. DeviantArt- Muro

Muro is an online drawing platform that is simple and easy to use. Here is how it works: Open the drawing canvas and start drawing right away. Use the tools in the bottom bar to select brushes, change the size and opacity of your shapes, use the eraser to delete unwanted parts in your drawings, and many more. You can also click to type text and add it as annotation inside your drawings. Once done, click to save your final drawing. You need to sign up or log in to save your work.


7. Draw Island

Draw island is an online drawing tool that teachers and students can use to create beautiful drawings. Draw Island is easy to use and offers a wide variety of features. You can choose among various screen sizes for your drawings, start drawing online using pencils, insert text and lines, import images to your drawing canvas, save drawings to your computer, create animated GIFs from your drawings, and many more. Draw Island is free and does not require a log in or sign up.