Here you’ll find an easy draw a Stick Person tutorial. Adding painted lines around the outside makes it a really fun painting.

Here’s an idea to try if your students are getting a little too caught up in making the PERFECT drawing — especially when it comes to self portraits.

Are they erasing more than they’re drawing lately? Then it might be time to give this stick figure project a try.

Ask students to forget, just for a moment, everything they’ve learned about drawing bodies. For this project, they MUST draw themselves with simple stick arms and legs. A thick black permanent marker works especially well because it keeps those lines nice and bold.

Then comes the painting. Instead of worrying about adding details to the figure, students can simply concentrate on painting colorful rings around themselves — rainbow colors, favorite colors, or any combination they like.

The one important rule? Keep the inside of the figure white. That white space against all those bright colors creates lots of wonderful contrast, which happens to be one of the Principles of Design.

See what happened there? You snuck a little art learning into what might be one of the simplest, least-fussy self portrait projects around. And sometimes, that’s exactly what young artists need.

Join “The Daily Draw” below to grab this tutorial

Materials

Crayola Watercolor Pan Set

Crayola Watercolor Paint Set (16 Count), Washable Paint for Kids, 1 Paint Brush, Arts & Crafts Supplies, Assorted Colors Real watercolor paper always makes the watercolor paintings much more vibrant *affiliate link

Watercolor Paper

Real watercolor paper always makes the watercolor paintings much more vibrant *affiliate link

Non-Spill Paint Cups

Train your students to return brushes to the cup they came from and you have an easy system with very little cleanup *affiliate link

Paint Brush

A good paint brush can make a big difference and this style with a sturdy rounded tip is my favorite. *affiliate link

Sharpie Marker

Sharpie Permanent Markers, Fine Point, Black

Pencils

Ticonderoga Wood-Cased Pencils, Unsharpened, #2 HB Soft

Erasers

*The below product links are referrals. If you click through and take action, I’ll be compensated a small amount, at no extra expense to you.

Directions

Time needed: 30 minutes

Draw yourself as a stick person, using ONLY LINES for the legs, hands, fingers and hair. Trace the drawing with a thick black permanent marker.
Outline the stick person with a thick line of watercolor paint. Work slowly and try not to get any paint inside the body so it stays white.
While still wet, add more rings of color, taking care to overlap just a bit to make the colors bleed.
Repeat with more rings until the background is filled. Leaving the inside of the
body white will create contrast and bring attention to the stick drawing.