17 Best iPad Drawing Apps for Kids

Electronics have become common for everyone, even children. Some kids learn to use iPads or other tablets before they are even a year old. Some of the best iPad drawing apps for kids are the ones that let them explore their creativity and make cute and beautiful pictures. If you’re traveling with kids, or world schooling as a digital nomad family, these apps will help kids of any age stay engaged while they learn new skills.

Most children enjoy drawing and painting, including finger painting. Drawing apps allow children to experience creativity at the tips of their fingers without causing a mess. They also allow kids to draw and paint on the go without needing a table and a bunch of pencils or markers.

If your child loves art, we recommend investing in a stylus pen that’s compatible with your iPad, to make drawing and painting easier.

Art apps allow children to create. Working on a drawing on iPad apps gives the kids all sorts of drawing tools that might not be as readily available in their homes. Children who love drawing on paper will also enjoy drawing in these iPad drawing apps.

Best Ipad Drawing Apps For Kids

Anti-Coloring Book

Some believe that just coloring inside the lines, while it aids in developing fine motor skills, is stunting the development of creativity. The Anti-Coloring Book app is perfect for them. It starts with a question or partial drawing, then encourages children to create their own art from there. This app costs $1.99 in the Apple app store.

ArtRage

ArtRage is a simulation of real painting tools. It keeps up with such factors as wetness and quantity of the paint used to allow spreading and blending. Colored pencils show the texture of the paper. The app supports layers, and users can import pictures to filter or redo.

ArtRage is one of the best drawing apps for iPad, but it is not free. It costs $2.99.

Astropad Studios

Astropad Studios is a subscription-based app that offers high performance. While most children may not require a high level of professional graphic tools, those who have access to them may develop the ability to use them to their full potential. This app is especially useful for older children.

Doodle Buddy Draw

Doodle Buddy Draw is one of the free drawing apps for iPad. It allows children to use stamps and stickers to create. It allows the import of photos which can then be edited with brushes, stickers, and more. There are backgrounds available to use for creating pictures.

Draw and Tell HD

Draw and Tell has a variety of brushes, colored pencils, and crayons, along with stickers and backgrounds. The lines can be plain colors, rainbow, or glowing. Children can save and share the drawings with family and friends. They can even record an explanation or story to go with it.

Drawing Box

Some of the drawing apps for iPad cost a little bit, and Drawing Box is one of those. Its $2.99 price tag allows it to offer lessons and tools for children to learn more about drawing while increasing their creativity. Pencils, pens, clip art, and stencils aid in creating pictures in the auto-recording app.

Drawing Desk: Draw, Paint Apps

Drawing Desk is good to use for drawing for kids and adults. It has a sketch desk that has realistic tools from pencil to watercolor. It offers unlimited layers and scaling of layers. It has over 200 instant shapes available and different color palettes. It can do text and textures, and kids can export their art.

Drawing for Kids: Doodle Games

Drawing for Kids is a great choice of baby drawing apps for toddlers. The app offers learning games, coloring pages, stickers, and drawing tools. Childhood education experts helped develop Drawing for Kids. It does not collect data from the children and it is a free app.

Drawing Pad

Drawing Pad is one of the best drawing apps for kids and has been featured on many lists of apps and in publications. The app includes colored pencils, crayons, pens, markers, brushes, and photo-realistic stickers. It is very usable for children and adults.

Drawing With Carl

Draw on a blank page or on an imported picture with Drawing with Carl. It has all sorts of tools and stickers to use. Children can share their images on Facebook or through email, or they can save pictures to edit more later. Drawing with Carl was designed for kids.

Kids Doodle – Draw Sketch

Kids Doodle has glowing lines that shine from the tablet face. Children can choose a single color, a rainbow, or one of the many other options. It is a free app and very enjoyable – even for adults.

Magic Doodle – Draw, Paint

Similar to Kids Doodle, Magic Doodle has similar brushes of a rainbow, neon, and more. Children can set colors to random or choose colors. Symmetrical options turn doodles into fractals and kaleidoscope-style artwork. The art is recorded, allowing kids to watch how they created their art.

Notes

Notes is a basic app that comes automatically with all iPad devices. It is a simple program that allows quick sketches.

Kids can easily save their work to share or work on more later. No additional downloads are required since Notes is bundled with the starter apps, unless someone removed it.

Pigment

While technically a coloring book, Pigment provides options that make it a creative goldmine. Children can use a tap-to-fill option to start, then graduate to using the freehand mode to shade and detail in ways that many coloring apps do not allow. Kids can create custom color palettes or use the built-in ones. It’s ideal for older kids – and adults too!

Sketchbook

Sketchbook allows kids or adults to create artwork from basic sketches to fully finished. Of all the art apps for iPad, Sketchbook is the one that is best suited for sketching. Children can draw with precision using guides and rulers.

The tools like airbrush and smear work digitally the same way the physical ones would. Kids can customize many parts of the app to aid in producing the desired artwork.

Squiggles (Ookii Squiggles)

Squiggles is a drawing app for babies that turns the child’s squiggles into nifty little creatures or accessories on the page. Six animated pages allow children to work within a framework while a free play page lets them draw anything that their little hands can manage.

Tayasui Sketches

The premise of Tayasui Sketches is that “beautiful tools make beautiful drawings.” This motto drives the app’s user-friendly interface. An artist’s toolbox full of beautiful tools makes the app excellent for creativity. Kids can import photos or start with a clean slate.

Kids can use layers to build up a picture from background to foreground, and layers can be exported and imported as separate images. Because the artwork can be synced to the cloud and used on any of your devices, children can work on the same images on either parent’s phone.

Conclusion – Best Ipad Drawing Apps For Kids

Creativity is an important part of children’s development. It helps to hone fine motor skills and it encourages problem-solving. It also provides entertainment during travel and something to do when the child needs to wait, like at a doctor’s office or when shopping with a parent.

If you have children who love to paint or draw, consider one or more of these best iPad drawing apps for kids.

Children of all ages from babies to teens will enjoy the apps listed above. Most of them are free drawing apps for iPad, but even the ones that cost a few dollars are well worth the fee.