A Full Art Lesson Online, No Installs

The lesson I kept having to split in two

For a long time my art lessons came in two halves. Half one was drawing: paper out, pencils out, example on the board. Half two was everything else: collecting thirty sheets, photographing the good ones before they got crumpled in a bag, and losing the rest. Digital tools promised to fix the second half, but every one I tried ate the first half instead, with installs, updates and login screens. A forty-minute lesson cannot afford a fifteen-minute setup.

So I built the lesson into pairPaint instead. The whole thing below runs in one browser tab, on whatever devices your school already has. Nothing here needs an account, an install, or your IT department.

Before the bell: two minutes of setup

Open pairPaint and tap the people button to create a room. Pick Teacher Mode, because that is the one built for a class: every student gets their own canvas, and you get a teacher view with a live thumbnail of every board. Add a room password if your school network is shared with older students. Then write the 5-letter room code on the board in big letters.

That is the whole setup, and it is the same every week, which matters more than it sounds. Kids learn the routine by the second lesson: open the page, type the code, wait for the example. The room guide covers the buttons in more detail if it is your first time.

Show the example

Put your own canvas on the classroom display and draw the day's picture step by step, the way you would on a whiteboard: the big shapes first, then the details, then colour. Students watch each step appear, and because you are drawing in the same app they are about to use, they also learn the tools without a separate demo. Brush for the outline, bucket fill for the big colour areas, undo when a line goes wrong.

If you would rather start from a picture, open the Media tool and drop in an image from your device, or pick a colouring page from the built-in library. Some teachers draw half the example and let students finish it their own way. That works well: it gives the stuck kids a start and the confident kids room to run.

Everyone draws, you watch it happen

Now the part that paper cannot do. While the class draws, your teacher view shows every canvas at once, updating live. You can see who is flying, who is stuck on the first line, and who finished early and needs a stretch task. Tap any thumbnail to open that student's board, and you can draw feedback right on it: circle the part that works, sketch a quick hint in the corner, then hand it back.

When you need the room's attention, pause drawing from the host controls. Every pen stops, thirty heads come up, you say your piece, and you unpause. Any teacher who has tried to talk over the sound of thirty kids colouring will understand why this is my favourite button in the app.

Collect the class as one PDF

At the end of the lesson, export the class set from the teacher view and pairPaint hands you a single PDF with every student's work in it. No collecting files, no photographing boards, no "who hasn't sent theirs yet". The PDF is handy beyond the lesson too: print it for a classroom wall, send it to parents, or keep it as the term's art record. The PDF export guide explains the print settings if you want pages that match the screen exactly.

Students can also save their own page as a PNG before they log off, and their work stays in their browser on that device for next time. But the class PDF is the copy I rely on, because it is complete even if a device gets wiped or shared with another class.

The 40-minute version

Here is the timing I use for a standard period. It flexes up or down, but the shape stays the same:

1. Minutes 0–5: code on the board, everyone joins, quick reminder of the brush, the bucket and the undo button.
2. Minutes 5–10: I draw the example on the big screen, step by step, and take questions.
3. Minutes 10–30: drawing time. I watch the thumbnails, drop feedback on boards, and pause once in the middle for a thirty-second tip.
4. Minutes 30–37: finishing touches. Everyone signs their page with the text tool.
5. Minutes 37–40: I export the class PDF and put three pages on the big screen for a quick, kind shout-out.

What can go wrong

Two things, mostly. A student joins with a typo in the code and lands in an empty room of their own: the fix is to leave and retype, and putting the code in big letters cuts this down to once a term. And someone always discovers the spray brush in week one and fogs their whole page: because Teacher Mode gives every student their own canvas, the fog is theirs alone, and undo takes it back. Neither costs you the lesson.

If your class is younger, the same routine works with simpler activities, and if your group is drawing for fun rather than marks, Collab Mode puts everyone on one shared canvas instead.

Frequently asked questions