How to Draw a Drought: Easy Landscape Tutorial for Kids

Explore environmental themes through art with this simple drought landscape tutorial. Designed for ages 5 and up, this activity requires only a pencil, paper, and eraser. Follow these steps to build confidence in sketching natural textures and weather patterns.

10 Steps

🎯 Final Result

A colorful, finished illustration of a drought landscape featuring a withered tree and cracked earth.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Sketching the Dried Roots

Pencil sketch showing the initial jagged outline of a withered tree root on a blank page.

Start by drawing a squiggly vertical line on the left side of your paper to represent a withered root. Add a smaller, jagged line branching off it. Teacher's Tip: Keep your pencil pressure light here; these are just guidelines for the final shape.

Step 2: Adding Withered Branches

Drawing showing the addition of crooked, pointed branches and a loose canopy outline.

Draw two crooked, parallel lines that meet at a point to form a branch. Repeat this for a second branch, then sketch a loose, uneven dome shape above them. Teacher's Tip: Don't worry about making the lines perfectly straight—nature is full of irregular shapes!

Step 3: Defining the Horizon

Sketch showing the completed tree structure and a horizontal line representing the horizon.

Add more vertical, crooked lines to complete the branch structure. Then, draw a long, uneven horizontal line across the page to create the horizon. Teacher's Tip: A slightly wavy line makes the ground look more natural than a ruler-straight one.

Step 4: Creating Soil Cracks

Close-up of the ground area showing jagged, lightning-bolt-style cracks being added.

Use blocky, zigzag lines to draw cracks in the soil, similar to how you might draw lightning bolts. Teacher's Tip: Vary the length of your lines to make the ground look realistically parched.

Step 5: Expanding the Texture

Drawing showing the ground filled with more interconnected, jagged cracks.

Continue adding more zigzag cracks across the foreground. Teacher's Tip: Try to connect some of the lines to create small, irregular polygons in the dirt.

Step 6: Finalizing the Dry Ground

The ground area is now fully detailed with numerous cracks, creating a dry soil texture.

Add a few final, smaller cracks to fill in any empty spaces. This gives the drawing a weathered, dry appearance. Teacher's Tip: Focus on making the cracks look random rather than perfectly symmetrical.

Step 7: Drawing Background Hills

Drawing showing the addition of distant, blocky hills in the background.

Sketch three overlapping, blocky hook shapes in the distance to represent hills. Add two lines inside each to give them depth. Teacher's Tip: Keep these shapes lighter than the foreground to create a sense of distance.

Step 8: Completing the Landscape

Drawing showing the completed background with hills on both sides of the horizon.

Repeat the hill-drawing process on the right side of the page, pointing the shapes in the opposite direction for balance. Teacher's Tip: Overlapping shapes is a great way to show perspective in a simple drawing.

Step 9: Adding the Sun

A sun with radiating rays is drawn in the upper corner of the landscape.

Draw a circle in the sky with short, curved lines radiating outward to represent the hot sun. Teacher's Tip: Place the sun slightly off-center to make your composition more dynamic.

Step 10: Coloring Your Scene

The final, colored version of the drought landscape drawing with vibrant colors and shadows.

Outline your drawing with black ink, using thicker lines for the cracks to add emphasis. Color the ground light brown, the tree a darker brown, the hills reddish-brown, the sky blue, and the sun pale yellow. Teacher's Tip: Use a darker shade of brown inside the cracks to create a shadow effect, making the ground look truly parched.