Drawing Workshop for Kids: Process Art Experiences for Building Creativity and Confidence

Engage children’s natural curiosity with this collection of 25+ process-driven drawing activities exploring essential art concepts and techniques.

In Drawing Workshop for Kids, art educator Samara Caughey, founder of the highly praised family-centered art studio Purple Twig, shares drawing invitations that support the development of creative, confident children ages 7 and up.

For each project, she includes comprehensive guidance: a materials list, step-by-step instructions, suggested prompts, and full-color photographs of the process and finished examples.

Quick warm-up activities using simple materials help kids loosen up and build confidence. Drawing workshops offer deeper, layered explorations that introduce new materials, concepts, and techniques.

These highly engaging yet low-pressure projects encourage multi-sensory observation and creative independence. Children will have fun as they practice:

• Creating tones by filling a page in with charcoal and then using different types of erasers to draw a still-life.
• Using their senses to understand a subject by choosing a fruit and drawing different versions of it as they eat it.
• Interpreting foreground and background by drawing a background world with colored pencils, which they glue to the bottom of a mint tin, and then drawing a foreground subject, which they place near the front of the tin.
• Drawing a bird’s eye view by using their imagination to draw a treasure map in pencil and watercolor.
• Focusing on patterns by drawing colorful feathers with chalk and marker, then cutting them out and pasting them to other shapes to make birds.

With tips for working with groups, a glossary of essential terms, and an overview of recommended materials, this book is a complete resource for creating art with kids.

Whether you are a classroom teacher, a homeschool instructor, a camp organizer, a parent or grandparent looking to engage your kids in a screen-free activity, or even an adult seeking ways to explore your creative side, Drawing Workshop for Kids is your answer and guide to the question, ＂But what should I draw?＂

Samara Caughey received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from University of Southern California. She taught art classes for children at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California, for 9 years before opening Purple Twig, an art studio for children and families. The studio teaches techniques in ceramics, drawing, sculpture, collage, and printmaking, all the while allowing children to have their own voice. Samara’s approach to teaching children grows directly out of her own fine art practice, which consists of sculpture and collage. She has exhibited professionally in solo and group shows in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. Samara is also contributing writer, creating art projects for children on a bimonthly basis for artfulparent.com and artbarblog.com, and has created art content for teachpreschool.com for their Discovery Conference on process art and how to incorporate it into a preschool curriculum. She lives in Los Angeles, California.