Generating visually engaging presentations often feels like a difficult task. The good news is, if you are a Google Slides user, you already have access to all the tools you need to engage your audience- especially when you learn to insert custom drawings.
Drawings are not just decoration; they are important for communication, interaction, and a good understanding of the content to the audience during a presentation. Drawings allow you to simplify the difficult processes, highlight important points, and transform an idea into visuals.
In this guide, we will discuss the process of how to insert a Google drawing in Slides.
What is the need to add drawings in Google Slides?
You have heard the saying that a Picture is worth a thousand words, and that is why you need drawings, charts, or bar diagrams in your slides.
Whether you are adding simple drawings or adding detailed flowcharts, Visuals polish your presentation from a boring document to an engaging presentation.
Here are reasons why to add visuals:
- Make a difficult topic easy: If you are handling a complicated topic, a quick diagram or flowchart makes the process easy to understand.
- Highlight the key data: To make the audience focus on the important information or key points, use simple drawings like a circle or flowchart rather than just bolding the text. It indirectly grabs the audience’s attention.
- Add your Human touch: A perfect straight line, circle, or flowchart is good. But a hand-drawn sketch can make your content more understandable, and the audience can easily relate to things during the presentation.
How to Insert a Drawing in Google Slides?
Method 1. Insert Drawing by Built-In Scribble Tool
This Scribble tool is the fastest way to create a simple, freehand drawing or flowchart on your slide. It is perfect for quick underlines, circles, or custom arrows.
Step-by-Step Guide:
- Open your Google Slides presentation and select the slide where you want to insert the image.
- In the top menu, click Insert.
- Hover over the line, and then select scribble from the drop-down menu.
- Your cursor will change to plus sign.
- Click and drag your mouse to draw your line or shape. Release the button when done.
Method 2. Insert Drawing from Google Drawings
For creating structured, reusable, and editable graphics like flowcharts, mind maps, or professional diagrams, the best approach is to use Google Drawings and link it to your slides.
Step-by-Step Guide
- Open drawing: Open your difficult diagram in Google Drawings.
- Copy Drawing: Select the entire drawing content, then go to edit, select copy.
- Paste and Link: Go to your Google Slides presentation. Go to edit do paste.
- When the prompt appears, choose the link option. Why link? If you edit the original Google Drawing file in the future, a small update button will appear on the linked object in your slide, allowing you to refresh the visual instantly without manual re-uploading.
Method 3. Upload a Hand-Drawn Picture or Sketch
If your drawing was hand-drawn like a sketch on paper or a photograph, you will insert it as a standard image file.
Step-by-Step Guide
- Save Your File: Make sure your sketch is saved as a digital file like JPEG, PNG, or GIF. Use PNG if you need a transparent background.
- In Google Slides, go to Insert image.
- Select upload from computer.
- Browse for your saved image file and click Open.
- The drawing will appear on your slide. Use the corner handles to resize it and drag it to reposition as needed.
Method 4: Here is the Best Solution for Advanced Drawing and Presentation Creation.
The manual methods above are great for individual drawings. But when a presentation requires Difficult formatted diagrams, charts, and well-structured layouts make you exhausted!
This is where you need a smarter, AI-powered alternative to handle the difficulties in design and content generation.
Google Slides. AI: The Smart Alternative:
Google Slides. AI is an AI Presentation Maker that works directly with Google Slides, allowing you to instantly convert ideas, text, PDFs, or even YouTube links into a fully structured, professionally designed slide deck. It is the ultimate tool to skip the difficult manual work, including complex drawing and formatting.
Why choose MagicSlides over a Manual Drawing Tool?
- It takes only a few minutes to generate a complete presentation with relevant visuals, charts, and clean layouts.
- The AI generates complete content and structure, too.
- Google Slides. AI applies a professional template across the entire slide deck, ensuring a polished, uniform look.
Google Slides. AI allows you to use the power of AI to create a polished presentation with relevant content and visuals within minutes. Let’s you focus on delivering your message, not designing your shapes.
Final Thoughts
The best method for inserting a drawing depends entirely on your need: For quick, casual notes, or underlining, the Scribble Tool is the simplest and fastest way to go; however, for professional, reusable diagrams that you need to edit and update it, the Google Drawings linked to your slide is the superior choice. Especially for presenters looking forward to reducing the hours spent on slide design, formatting, and manual layout of difficult visuals, an advanced AI solution like Google Slides. AI is the best choice, as it offers polished and professional Slides instantly.
Quick FAQ’s
Q1: Can I draw on a tablet or iPad using the Google Slides app?
The Google Slides mobile app does not currently support direct freehand drawing using a finger or Apple Pencil. You would need to upload a Hand-drawn Picture or Sketch, or an alternative app.
Q2: Can I animate my drawings after inserting them?
Yes. Any drawing is treated as a single object. You can select it and add standard Google Slides animations like fade in, fly in, or spin.
Q3: Is there a maximum size for the image files I can upload?
Google Slides has limits for uploaded images. It is best to keep image size under 5MB and dimensions under 2500 pixels to ensure high performance and quality.
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