Google Drawings

Teachers & Students

What is Google Drawings?

Google Drawings is a free app located in Google Drive and can be used to create drawings including images, shapes, text, and more. They can be shared for collaborative editing, in real-time, inserted directly into Google Docs & Sites, and downloaded (to PDF, JPEG, & PNG files). Drawings are vector images, which means that they will not be pixelated.

Getting Started

2 ways to start Google Drawings
1. 1. From your Google Drive: click on New > click on More > select Google Drawings
  2. From a Google doc: select Insert > Drawing > New or from Drive

Name it → all changes saved in Drive

Go to Drawings

The Basics

Google Drawings Tutorial

Making & Using Templates

Teachers can create a Google Drawing template for students to copy and edit.

The Tracing Food Chains from Food Webs example (right), is a template that students can make a copy & edit. To show that they can identify food chains within food webs, students move the colored text boxes from either side of the food web image to the food chains set up at the bottom.

Additional instructions can be added in a text box placed in the margin, outside the drawing "canvas."

Students can share their Google Drawing with their teacher at any point for feedback.

Resize Canvas

There are 2 ways to change the canvas size:

Drag bottom right corner of document canvas
File > Page setup > select ratio or set custom

Insert

Use either the tool icons at the top of the document canvas or use the Insert menu.

Lines
Images → Search the web, Camera
Text boxes → hyperlinks
Shapes → can type inside shape
Table
Chart
Diagrams → choose type, select levels & color scheme
Special characters → insert emojis

Change Background

Automatically is transparent (PNG)
To change: hold down Control key + click on background > select Background > select color

Download

File menu > Download > select the format

- jpeg has white background
- png has a transparent background
- svg is a vector graphic and will not pixelate when sizing

Publish

Publishing to the web to get an embed code allows the drawing to be embedded into Blackboard or documents that accept embed codes.

File menu > Publish to Web
Click on Embed tab
Click Publish button
Copy embed code (HTML)