Tom Mullaney

I have long advocated students use digital tools for drawing. The research states that drawing benefits learning.

Unfortunately, two obstacles stand in the way of K-12 students hoping to take advantage of cloud storage and the perfect eraser and undo buttons digital drawing offers.

• Most K-12 students use non-touchscreen Chromebooks. That means they need a web-based digital drawing app and are using a trackpad, a device not optimal for drawing.
• Many people struggle with drawing. I know because I am one of them. Here is Exhibit A, my first attempt at the Adobe Express October 2023 Drawing Creative Challenge:

As rudiementary as this drawing is, did you notice the hearts? Somehow, they look great. They are varied in shade and size yet are precise. Hmm.

Here is Exhibit B to prove I struggle with drawing:

This is another rudiementary drawing, but did you notice the snow? Amidst some unskilled sketches with a hard rounded brush, the snow looks like very realistic. 

How did I generate such good hearts and snow? The drawing feature of Adobe Express. That’s how.

Getting Started

Create a drawing in Express by going to the homepage, clicking the + icon, and searching for “Drawing.”

Alternatively, you can go to Education on the homepage. Then click “Drawing and Fun” and “Drawing” to start from scratch or use a template.

But how does Adobe Express make digital drawing attainable? Here are four quirky features that enable beautiful drawing.

Draw WITHOUT Drawing – Precision Brushes

Remember the hearts and the snow? I did not draw them. I just used brushes that put them on the canvas. Express has many of these brushes that put precise items on the canvas. 

Multicolor Brushes that do this include:

• Green ivy
• Leafy
• Leafy vine
• Rainbow seurat – Good for multicolored leaves on the ground.
• Round chain
• Star scatter

Please note that the color of Multicolor Brushes is not adjustable.

Adobe Express also had 42 Decorative Brushes that do this. These brushes can be any web color, though Sparkler renders as multiple colors unless it is set to black. The Decorative Brushes include bricks, grass, leaves, ferns, bats, and many items seen in nature.

One-Click Actions

Several brushes add beauty to the canvas with just one click. For example, use the Hard rounded brush and clicking once renders a perfect circle.

Basic Brushes that are useful with one click include:

• Hard rounded (circle)
• Dotted line (circle)
• Dash line (a dash)
• Halftone circle (a circle that looks like it was printed in a newspaper comic.

Multicolor Brushes that are useful with one click include:

• Asterix (a teal and purple asterisk)
• Cheesy (an orange asterisk)
• Golden cord (a decorative golden circular puff)
• Rainbow string (a circle of rainbow-colored dots)

Digital Drawing Pro Tip: You can do so much in Adobe Express without conventional sketching. However, if you are using a trackpad on a non-touchscreen device, hold the trackpad down with the index finger of your non-dominant hand. Then, draw on the trackpad with your dominant index finger.

Blend Colors

There is no color blend tool in Adobe Express Drawing, but there are at least two workarounds. One is to lower a color’s transparency, draw on the canvas with it, and then cover that color with another set to low transparency. Use the color picker to grab the color created by the two overlapping colors.

The other way to blend colors is to use different colors with the Diluted acrylic brush under Art supplies. Paint one color on top of the other, and you see a little bit of each.

The Artsy Eraser

The Adobe Express Drawing eraser adds to art besides just erasing ink. Adjust the hardness to get a white spray paint or blurred effect.

Ideas for Growth

Some say Adobe is known for PDFs. I say Adobe is known for layers. I hope they add the layers that are so ubiquitous in Adobe’s other apps, such as the Express graphic editor. Imagine using eraser hardness to manipulate just one layer.

I would love to see the ability to set an image as a background in Adobe Express Drawing. 

My dream for the drawing tools is to use them in the graphic editor. That could be similar to how Express’s graphics tools integrate with its video editor.

Conclusion

I hope this helps you get started with Adobe Express Drawing.

What do you think? How do you use digital drawing in the classroom?

Does your school need professional development that helps teachers design engaging lessons with Adobe Express and educational technology? Look at some of my offerings and connect with me on Twitter.

Blog Post Image: Pen Pencil Brush Neon Sign by anna_leni in Adobe Stock.

AI Disclosure:

I wrote this blog post without the use of any generative AI. That means:

• I developed the idea for the post without using generative AI.
• I wrote an outline for this post without the assistance of generative AI.
• I wrote the post from the outline without the use of generative AI.
• I edited this post without the assistance of any generative AI. I used Grammarly to assist in editing the post. I have Grammarly GO turned off.