I have to say, one of the best surprises of this 2025-2026 school year was the incredible homeschool art lessons I used with my kids!
I homeschool in the Midwest, and our winters are brutal: lasting essentially from October through, sometimes, April! With summer quickly approaching, we won’t be using online tutorials or resources nearly as much as we do during cold winter months. However, I still wanted to share the BEST online art tutorials for kids today, in case you are in another part of the world, need something free & engaging to do on a rainy day, or have just been wanting to see what’s out there for art tutorials!
Best Homeschool Drawing Lessons
Without a doubt, the best drawing tutorials online for kids have to be those on Art For Kids Hub. These engaging videos are run by Mr. Rob, the dad of the family, and he’s typically accompanied by one of his four kids. It is really fun to watch what is clearly a family endeavor!
One of my favorite things about Art For Kids Hub is that they show the tutorial with two sample papers, from above: one sample paper is Mr. Rob drawing, and the other sample paper is the child, drawing. Mr. Rob is kind and encouraging, emphasizing that the most important thing is to have fun! I think having one of the kids draw alongside Mr. Rob helps children watching / doing the drawing video feel more calm and capable, too. I know one of my own kiddos, who frustrates easily, feels better when he sees Mr. Rob’s son or daughter drawing alongside him, and not necessarily making perfect shapes, or lines, or other markings on each step! This aspect really seems to relieve pressure for kids, and allow them to just have fun.
If you’re new to my blog, you may not have read my other posts about SafeShare yet, but I use this for everything on YouTube. We don’t have our kids access YouTube directly; instead, I copy and paste the YouTube links into SafeShare. On SafeShare, they can watch any link I selected, without ads or popups. It’s awesome. You can read more about this awesome homeschool tool, here.
Another huge perk of Art For Kids Hub is the versatility of tutorials available. There are cartoony versions of every animal and character you can think of. They also have realistic tutorials available. They have specialty projects like the folding surprises (my daughter loves these!) and so much more.
Even though we’ve been using Art for Kids Hub the past three years, only this year did I realize they have a whole set of preschool-specific lessons!! I used these for my own preschooler this year and they were excellent. Perfectly on-par with his fine motor development.
More Homeschool Drawing Lessons
In contrast to Art For Kids Hub, my daughter and I have recently used the One Pencil Drawing art tutorials. These are for more advanced artists. What I like about these tutorials is they emphasize using only one pencil, so you don’t have to go out and buy any fancy materials (unless you want to!) The creator uses The Loomis Method, which uses a “ball and plane” approach to look at shapes and methods for drawing the human head from various angles.
Lastly, my daughter took a few classes on Outschool this year, for drawing. They were excellent, and I highly recommend Outschool! Her teacher was kind, personable and helpful. The lessons taught my daughter some great techniques, and she even entered their art contest at the end of the year! Outschool is an amazing resource and offers a huge variety of virtual classes for homeschoolers.
Homeschool Painting Lessons
At the beginning of the post, I mentioned how art tutorials were one of the best surprises of our year this year! Art For Kids Hub we actually started three years ago, and Andrea Nelson’s watercolors, we did during the 2024-2025 school year (I will share more about her, below). The surprise this year was actually in the area of acrylic painting- something I considered advanced, messy, complicated, and also something I hadn’t touched since high school!
This fall, as October was passing, I had the sudden inspiration to throw an Art Show in our home! I needed something fun to plan, before the holiday season started. I was really loving some of the art my son was creating in his oil pastel co-op class, my daughter was constantly creating and had dabbled in a little of everything, and even my preschooler son was joining in the fun, doing drawing tutorials with us! So, I planned an Art Show. (More on that, later!) I honestly don’t remember how it happened, but one evening, my daughter and I sat down and tried this tutorial from The Art Sherpa. The rest is history-truly!
Above is my second grade daughter’s rendition of this floral vase tutorial. Below are mine, and my preschooler’s versions!
Honestly, we were hooked almost instantly. We already had a lot of the supplies, and I went out to Hobby Lobby and grabbed a simple, inexpensive set of canvases for us to use. For some of the tutorials we used canvas, and for some of them we used simple watercolor paper. My daughter and I probably completed 10-15 tutorials in the span of two months! It was an absolute blast.
My daughter is the artist of the family, and her stamina amazes me. She was only seven when she painted these! I cannot wait to see what the next few years have in store for her, and she develops more skills.
The Art Sherpa is hosted by a woman named Cinnamon Cooney, who seemed to be such a kind and gentle soul. After a few months of doing her videos, my daughter and I were heartbroken to hear that she died late 2024. It is very evident that she is passionate about teaching art, and has helped thousands of people become more confident with acrylic and watercolor painting. We so enjoyed her videos and are thankful that the family has kept them online, so that people can continue to benefit from her amazing talent and expertise.
Here are a few of our favorites that we tested out:
The Artistic Elephant (displayed at our Art Show in the photo above; my favorite of my daughter’s pieces)
A Cantankerous Ostrich (also displayed at our Art Show, see photo above)
Northern Lights (my daughter painted this on a 12×12 canvas, for a gift!)
Village Blue Door (my personal favorite, of the ones I did myself! See below!)
Here is my own result, from my favorite tutorial- the blue village door! Link is above, if you want to try yourself!
To sum it up: I would highly recommend The Art Sherpa. My daughter and I often couldn’t even choose which tutorial to try, because they were all so vibrant and gorgeous!
Homeschool Watercolor Lessons
Andrea Nelson Art is another YouTube channel we loved! I first heard about her from a homeschool mom friend. My oldest two, who were 1st and 3rd grade at the time, tried her Watercolor Challenge first.
I got each of us mini watercolor spiral notebooks, and a little set of new watercolors. Then, we did the first 20 days or so of her challenge!
My daughter likes to plug a watercolor video into SafeShare whenever she wants to make a pretty card for someone, or just to do some water-coloring in general.
We love Andrea because she is whimsical, fun, and a great conversationalist. This may seem like a funny quality to comment on, in the context of a YouTube video, but it’s true–she often tells amusing stories about her family, or pets, while she’s showing you water-coloring techniques. She’s very personable and we love her!
Here are a few of our favorite watercolors from her tutorials, both done by my (at the time) first grader:
I hope this post was helpful to you! If you try and of these out, I would love to hear what you think. If you have additional art tutorials you think are awesome for kids, I’d love to hear those recommendations too!
Happy creating!
Cait
Leave a Reply