Dazzling Classroom Creations with Google Draw!

The artistic flare and graphic design capacity of Google Draw are largely underrated by educators and students. Google Draw is innovative and visionary- it will take student expression and creativity to a whole new unimaginable level. Quick access to Google Draw is available through your the blue “New” menu in your drive and simply scrolling down to see the “more” options menu where you will find “Google’s Best Hidden Secret” red icon with an overlapping circle and square. I started dabbling with the Google Draw features just a couple short months ago and have absolutely been blown away by the creative possibilities for my diverse middle school classroom. With a few quick steps, you can easily create sharp looking visuals that are professional in appearance, high resolution, and compatible with any other application of Google or Social Media platform.  So sit back, relax, and check out this Google Draw Art classroom showcase to demonstrate just a few of the ingenious ideas that you can incorporate into your teaching practice to engage and spark student creativity.

Inspirational Portraits

This portrait of Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and female education activist, is created primarily with the curve and polyline tools. The curve tool works great for the basic colour outline and shape, and the polyline tool works great to great the contours of both the face and head covering. A slight gradient background compliments the portrait and creates a nice finished look.

The portrait of Lily Singh, Canadian YouTuber, and Actress, is created with the same combination of the curve and polyline tools. An effective way to get a 3-Dimensional look on a 2-Dimensional graphic. These portraits can then be exported as either .jpeg’s or .png’s and printed and shared any way you like! These make for great wall hangings in the classroom.

Replica Paintings

Ted Harrison

Ted Harrison is one of Canada’s most popular artists and is known for his distinct colours and layering of scenes relating to his love of the land and people of the Yukon Territory. The secret behind this masterpiece is to continually layer your curve tool closed shapes and select colours that are vibrant and related to each other in the colour Google colour schemes (ie. columns in the fill colour paint palette).

Character Slides

Students can easily bring their novel characters to life with the help of Google Draw! Customize your Google slide decks with your very own self-created images in Draw, which can be easily grouped, copied, and pasted into Google Slides. When portraits or drawings start getting multiple layers and complex details, it is great to highlight the entire image and group together to ensure that everything is connected when you move around the portrait or image.

Learning Representations

Google Draw is a versatile learning tool for students to create learning representations based on any curriculum topic. This is an example of a European explorer ship that a student studied during our exploration unit. The amount of detail and precision in this drawing is absolutely incredible. The great thing also is that Google Docs has Google Draw built right in so you can easily integrate custom images into any project or assignment.

As you can see through this Google Art classroom showcase there is plenty of room for Google Draw in your modern day classroom. The creative possibilities are absolutely endless and students love the option to demonstrate learning in new and original ways.  I encourage all educators to explore the unique features of Google Draw to inspire and motivate their learners. Trust me, you will be blown away by the high-level detailed visuals that are shared your way!  

 

 

Emma Cottier
Certified Google Trainer & Innovator
Middle School Teacher & Technology Support
Saanich School District 63
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