While reading through my big round-up of cute drawings, I realized something: this site is big and popular enough now that an article specifically on easy drawing ideas is necessary! That’s right… this article curates for you the most simple, straightforward, and satisfying art tutorials of the whole bunch, so you can effortlessly enjoy creative expression.
As background, I’m an artist and teacher named Ms. Marshall, and I hand-draw every single illustration on this site, from the mushroom drawings, to the umbrellas. Each of these tutorials has step by step instructions, including black and white ink sketches. Many of the lessons below have time-lapse art videos, so you can see my entire process from start to finish — including all the times I erased lines that didn’t look quite right!
Finally, a caveat. As you may have noticed in my easy, cute food drawing tutorials, I have an adoration of putting sweet cartoon eyes and smiles on everything I draw.
To make these drawing prompts even simpler, you can just leave those friendly faces out! Ready for our round-up? Let’s go…
Easy Drawing Ideas
Looking for easy drawing ideas? Here are simple, fun, cute prompts and instructions for how to create satisfying, low-stress cartoon art.
Easy Cloud Drawing
Here are three different easy ways to make a cloud drawing -- all pleasing and lovely to look at.
Simple Cherry Drawing
Drawing a pair of cherries is simple and satisfying. Their red glossy color just takes a little shading and some highlights, explained here.
Easy Mushroom Drawing
Here are two different straightforward ways to make mushrooms bloom on your paper.
Easy Spider Drawing
Here is an easy spider drawing tutorial that simplifies the otherwise complicated aspects of an arachnid.
Easy Umbrella Drawing
With bright colors and an optional wide smile, this easy umbrella drawing will brighten any storm day.
Easy Candle Drawing
To make this easy candle drawing even simpler, take off some of the wax "drips" along the side! (Though I will say that their benefit is you don't need to make perfectly striaght lines.)
Tree Drawing
Trees are one of the simplest but most satisfying things in nature to draw. Bonus if you can make two of the branches look like excited waving arms!
Simple Octopus Drawing
Behold three different ways to ink an easy octopus -- we just need to take a few liberties with the actual anatomy, as explained here.
Simple Sea Urchin Drawing
Here are three different ways to draw an easy sea urchin, from simplest to a bit more involved.
Easy Pumpkin Drawing
The hardest part of this easy pumpkin drawing is inking the lines around the eyes -- and you can make it even simpler by just leaving out the face.
Simple Snowman Drawing
This tutorial simplifies the snowman drawing process even further by taking out the carrot nose and focusing on the most important aspects.
Simple Snail Drawing
To make this easy sail drawing even simpler, we just need to move the placement of the eyes. Full explanation here...
Easy Hat Drawings
There are so many different types of hats to draw, and many are satisfyingly simple! See my round-up of tutorials for sketching head coverings here.
Cute Coloring Pages
If you want an even easier and more stress-free art project, check out my round-up of free printable coloring sheets on a wide range of topics, from animals, to fantasy, to food, to holidays.
What Makes Art “Simple?”
I hope you enjoyed this list of easy creative drawings. So, what makes a certain art project simple to sketch? In my view, “easy” means the piece has fewer lines needed, and there’s more “forgiveness” for “not perfect” lines.
For example, a sea urchin is quick and low-stress to draw because it’s just a bunch of zig zags in a circle. In contrast, a challenging cartoon would be a reindeer drawing, because of its difficult angles and multiple parts.
Simply adding color to printable cute coloring pages is even more relaxing. Both easy and difficult art projects are worthwhile and beautiful — they’re just different!
Easy Drawing Ideas, in Sum
Which of these easy drawing ideas was your favorite? Do share! If you’re ready to go up in complexity a bit, check out my round-up of cute animal drawings, which include a certain animal that I find exceptionally challenging to sketch…
Want more? Check out my list of creative ideas from around the world!
The author and artist, Lillie Marshall, is a National Board Certified Teacher of English who has been a public school educator since 2003, and an experienced Reiki practitioner since 2018. All art on this site is original and hand-drawn by Lillie. She launched DrawingsOf.com Educational Cartoons in 2020, building upon the success of her other sites, AroundTheWorldL.com (established 2009), TeachingTraveling.com (founded 2010), and ReikiColors.com. Subscribe to Lillie’s monthly newsletter, and follow @WorldLillie on social media to stay connected!
