Free Online Art Games for the Art Classroom – The Arty Teacher

I’ve been asked the question ‘Where can I find free online art games that I can use in the classroom?’  I’ve been scouring the internet and below is a selection of free online art games that are great fun and might well link to the projects you teach.  They can be a useful extension task if you have computers or iPads in your classroom.  Bookmark this blog post as you are sure to want to come back to it!

Colour

This game is a great way to consolidate knowledge about hue, saturation, complementary, analogous, triadic and tetradic colours.  If your students do not know these terms part of the task can be to look them up.  I wouldn’t normally teach about triadic and tetradic colours. You have to match the colours on the screen which is harder than you think.  At the end of the game, you are given a score and therefore the excuse to play again as you have something to beat!

This is Sand

Challenge your students to make a landscape with ‘This is Sand’. This would make a great homework if you are teaching a project on landscapes. It is a simple idea: students sprinkle digital sand in layers to create images. They can subtly change colours and download their creations.

Street Art

Street art is a game by The Tate.  I have mixed opinions about this one as it’s quite limited, although I do like the wall background and the spray paints.  What do you think?

Inspiral Web

Are you old enough to remember the old fashioned spirograph? Well, this is the web version. You can choose different disks and different colours and save your creations.

Jig Zone

Jig zone is an online puzzle site with an art section.  Students do the puzzles by dragging the pieces into place.  A simple activity to fill the end of a lesson if you only have 5 minutes left and starting something else would be unwise at that point.

Quick, Draw!

‘Quick, Draw!’ is interesting as it asks the question ‘Can a neural network learn to recognize doodling?’  It asks you to add to the worlds largest doodling dataset.  You have 20 seconds to draw the items it asks for.  I think the learning here is simply opening children’s minds to the idea that a computer can learn.

Auto Draw

Auto draw’s main feature is that you start drawing and it tries to recognise what you are drawing.  You can then click on the picture and your drawing turns into that picture.  There is a useful tutorial if click on the menu in the top left-hand corner under ‘How to’. You can add text and shapes.  There are more colours than you might think in the colour picker.  I think you could use the shapes and colours and text to teach colour theory.

Weave Silk

Weave Silk is a wonderfully therapeutic game that involves symmetry. Simply use your cursor on the screen to make symmetrical patterns. It has a slide where you can change to rotational symmetry and colours can be blended. Challenge yourself to make flowers, birds, bats and if you’re feeling ambitious – faces!

Kern Me

If you teach graphics you will love this game.  Kerning is the spacing between letters or characters in a piece of text.  This game teaches students to create the correct spacing by eye.  Great fun!

Shape Type

‘Shape Type’ is a letter shaping game.  Students need to move points on the letter to try and get a pleasing shape to the letter.  Super tricky but quite addictive!

50 Famous Paintings

‘Can you name the 50 Famous Paintings’ is on the ‘How Stuff Works’ website and has many easily recognisable paintings.

TriviaPlaza

TriviaPlaza is a quiz site which has an art section.  Be warned – they quizzes are difficult.  Suitable for frustrating bright students aged 16+ or for art teachers to test their knowledge!

I’d love to keep adding to this blog post, so if you know of any cool free online art learning games, please comment below.

Don’t forget to check out all the Free Resources on The Arty Teacher!

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The Arty Teacher

Sarah Crowther is The Arty Teacher. She is a high school art teacher in the North West of England. She strives to share her enthusiasm for art by providing art teachers around the globe with high-quality resources and by sharing her expertise through this blog.

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