Fun and Easy Drawing Animal Art Projects for Kids

Try these fun and easy drawing exercises in your home or classroom. These easy art projects can be adapted to any age group, from kindergarten to high school.

Squiggle Animal Art

This is a great way to teach each child how to draw carefully and use their visual imagination to create art.

Each child will need drawing paper or light construction paper, markers and/or crayons, and pencils with erasers.

Have each child take a pencil and draw one continuous squiggly line all over their paper lightly with a pencil. Encourage them not to pick up their pencil. Focus on the movement and the curves of the line and encourage each child to cover each corner of the paper. The line should be large, with many large loops.

After each child finishes their line, have them use their imagination to "see" different types of animals and plants within the squiggly line. Using a marker, have them trace over their pencil lines to outline the animal shapes. After the child has discovered each type of animal hidden within their art drawing and has traced each animal shape with a marker, have them erase all of their pencil lines.

Use the markers and crayons to color in the rest of the drawing picture. Have the students share their art with the class or if you are at home, proudly frame and display your child's art on the refrigerator or in their room.

Drawing Animal Shapes

This art project teaches each child how to draw basic animal drawings using simple geometric shapes.

You will need copies of simple drawings and photographs of different types of animals, pencils with erasers, drawing paper, and color pencils.

If you are in an art classroom setting, you may want to do a teacher demonstration before beginning the art project. If you are at home or in a smaller classroom setting, you can begin the art project together with the children.

Each child has a copy of an animal shape. Using a pencil, each child identifies recognizable shapes, like an oval or a square, within the drawing. The child isolates the different shapes in the drawing and draws the shapes over the animal picture with a pencil. Once all of the shapes in the animal picture have been identified, the child then begins to copy the shapes onto their own blank piece of drawing paper.

Once the child has transferred the animal geometric shapes onto their drawing paper, the child can erase unnecessary extra lines and add detailed features like fur, eyes, ears, claws, tails, and teeth. Once the drawing is complete, the child can color in their art picture with color pencils.

For older children, you can opt to progress from a simple animal drawing to a more complex art drawing. For example, the child can progress from an art picture of a snake, to a snail, to a butterfly, to a tiger, to a fish or complex picture of a bird. Important art concepts to discuss include line, contour, and perspective.