SKETCHPAD – A perfect Online Drawing Platform For Kids

Ideal Digital Drawing Platform for Young Children

Are you looking for a fun and easy way to help your child get familiar with digital drawing tools that are easy to use? Sketchpad is a great option and perhaps the best free online drawing tool for kids available.

It has a very intuítive interface and user-friendly tools, making Sketchpad simple for children of all ages to create all kinds of digital art, from simple sketches to amazing drawings or lettering, etc. This powerful drawing platform for kids has everything needed to bring out the artist in every child and the perfect stepping stone, in our opinion, toward more complex drawing tools!

The online version of Sketchpad it’s totally free to use! In this blog post, we’ll cover why Sketchpad is such a great tool for kids, what you need to get started, and show you around the Sketchpad toolset.

Here you can also find a list of digital drawing softwares which are great to continue the journey of digital art and design. From beginner friendly to hardened professional. Here are some of the best tools available!

SKETCHPAD – A perfect Online Drawing Tools For Kids

First things first, while in our opinion it is the perfect online drawing tool for kids to get started and explore their creativity, and enhance their skills, don’t let this fool you into thinking that Sketchpad can’t be helpful for the parents also 🙂 We all need to start somewhere, and usually, it is at the beginning!

An example of a digital drawing by our daughter made with SketchPad!

Why do we think Sketchpad is the Best Online Drawing Tool for Kids?

Let’s be honest! It is probably a fair statement to say that our kids have changing interests over time. As parents, it can be hard to figure out what our kids want to do over time, what they want to do today, and what they think is cool now and what’s not. Did we mention their minds change ever so quickly?

With that in mind, you don’t want to over-invest and buy the latest and greatest drawing tool or software that could be a waste of money in a few weeks.
At the same time, you want to expand their creative expression and enthusiasm. So that is why the online free Sketchpad is a great place to start.

What features make Sketchpad stand out as the first online drawing tool for kids?

Do we only like the fact that it is a free drawing tool? Not at all! We like how Sketchpad lets kids get acquainted with the basic principles of drawing software. 

Similar digital drawing software concepts – but a kid-friendly learning curve

All professional digital art drawing software uses the same principles. You can work your designs in different layers, undo mistakes, use different brush styles and colors, etc.  

However, if you would use digital drawing software like Krita or Photoshop, you’ll find that the learning curve is too aggressive for a beginner. For young kids, it makes sense to get started with something more basic but with enough features to be usable.

No prior knowledge is required, a simple way to experience digital drawing for kids

So with Sketchpad, your kids get to experience these same features, but in their basic version. It also helps that this free drawing tool is easy to pick up and start using right away with no prior experience or knowledge needed. So even younger kids can get a feel of digital drawing with Sketchpad.

Sketchpad does a great job of this by allowing kids to work on their designs without having them worry too much about the underlying principles. However, they are learning about them as they go. 

We DO recommend investing in a Drawing Pad.

There is, however, one thing we recommend investing in, and that’s a drawing pad. A drawing pad lets you draw directly on the screen and get a more realistic feel of the action, much closer to traditional drawing.​​

Drawing with a mouse can be off-putting for kids and limit their expression as they discover digital drawing for the first time. Drawing tablets are a must-have for kids, anyway. Not just for their hobbies but likely also for school assignments in the future.​​

A good drawing pad isn’t that expensive anymore and lasts for a long time!

So what does the drawing pad do for you exactly?

It provides the artist with more accuracy when drawing digitally. Still, it also allows them to create more expressive lines and curves you can’t achieve with a mouse. When choosing a drawing pad, consider that they are not all of the same quality. You should pay attention to one where the drawing pen has good pressure sensitivity. Pressure sensitivity controls allow for more natural brush strokes when drawing, painting, or shading. They can make the design look much more professional.

A vast selection of drawing tablets is available these days, so finding one that suits your needs should be easy. You can find entry-level ones with basic features for a few dollars to high-end ones with all the bells and whistles. For example, our family shares the drawing pad between us.

So while you can pick up simple drawing pads and pens for as little as 20 USD, we’d recommend you stick to the major drawing pad brands like Wacom or Huion. Here are some examples!

So all-in-all, when it comes to drawing pads, we think it is a much better investment to get a high quality drawing pad compared to paying a high price for Digital Drawing Software platform. Drawing pads can be usefull for all ages and can be used accross different digital drawing platforms.

Mini Tutorial – How to use Sketchpad – Recommendations and thoughts from our child!

SketchPad – BLANK CANVAS

First off, you get started with a Black Canvas. As you can see, the Sketchpad black canvas starts with a typical transparent layer represented by grey and white squares.

In the left sidebar, you can manage many options, like selecting, cropping, choosing a pencil for drawing, clipart, Letters for writing, and more.

The right floating sidebar allows you to UNDO or REDO steps or play around with the layers.

FUN Sketchpad Features For Kids

STAR icon

The star icon lets your child select different pre-created shapes, like stars, hearts, squares, and circles. These shapes can be easily adapted with fill color, outline, transparency, and more!

Crayon icon

The Crayon Icon lets children choose between multiple types of pens and brushes. Each crayon can be personalized!

Text icon

Text Icon is perfect to go beyond simply drawing, allowing your kids to play around and create their own logo’s, birthday cards, and more.

Smiley Face icon

One of the great tools in the Sketpad set is the large amount of free clipart illustrations that can be used. This allows for even the youngest of our children have some fun. Clip art illustrations can be added to our Black canvas and are easily adjusted for size, etc…

Our Daughter’s Thougths about the Sketchpad Digital Drawing Platform!

Of the top, Sketchpad is super easy to use and lets me have an excellent little toolset online, so I don’t need to download and install a program first. While I can’t compare Sketchpad with the full capability of a professional digital drawing platform like KRITA, I think Sketchpad is a fantastic entry point for beginning digital drawing artists.

The cool thing is that everything you learn with Sketchpad will be helpful later on if you step it up a notch and consider a tool like Krita or Clip Studio Paint. At the same time, Sketchpad allows you to instantly start creating cool designs and drawings on its blank canvas. Such a great set of tools to get started and learn about the concept of using different types of brushes and pencils, learn to work with layers, and so on.

All-in-all, I definitely recommend Sketchpad to get started. If you want to step it up, use Krita or Clip Studio Paint! But for younger kids, Krita will stand in the way of having fun, as the learning curve is too steep. It is much better and easier to start with Sketchpad and build up from there.

Takeaways: PROS & CONS SketchPad

Sketchpad – Our Impression!

We have yet to find an online digital drawing platform that makes it easy and fun to start your digital drawing quickly.

Your children will love it, and as a parent, Sketchpad lets you quickly test how much your children like to draw digitally.

As we have mentioned earlier in this blog post. It is a much better investment to start with a quality digital drawing pad than spending a lot of cash on expensive digital drawing software.

Having said that, you don’t need to take our word for it. Try it out for yourself. Sketchpad is free to use!