As someone who spent many years teaching in elementary classrooms, I enjoyed doing directed draws (or paints) with my students. One of my favorite directed paints was creating banana splits inspired by Wayne Thiebaud with students who were reponsible for mixing their own colors. I began to wonder what this might look like digitally? I searched for examples online and couldn’t find anything so I thought I would try creating some.

Here’s the steps I came up with on my first attempt.

This particular directed draw requires some more advanced skills using color fill, line color, layering and rotating objects which my directions do not include in detail. For those just getting started with digital directed draws, I see the need for simpler designs at first. Even though I think there is tremendous value for students to put pencil or brush to paper (I prefer sketchnoting on paper), I can see benefit of doing quick digital directed draw activities with students.  It would help build their skills of different features that they can apply in their own work as well as help them conceptualize and visualize everyday objects in layers of different shapes.