36 easy unicorn drawings for kids

We read the unicorn drawing pages that come up in a search before we drew a line. Most of them teach one unicorn. The longest list we found links out to ten separate tutorials, two of them famous cartoon characters, and the pages that do show their steps use anywhere from 6 to 31 of them. None gave an age with a reason, and the one page with unicorn facts cited nothing for them.

So every drawing here is on this page, in four steps, drawn in crayon the way a child would draw it, and sorted by the shapes it needs. In steps 1 to 3 the new lines are black and the earlier ones gray, and step 4 is the drawing colored in. Under each one is a unicorn fact your child can say out loud while they color, with a link to where it comes from. Children vary a lot, so treat the ages as a starting point: a confident three-year-old can try the next group, and a seven-year-old who wants a quick win can go back to the donut.

How do you draw a unicorn in 4 steps?

Draw an oval for the body, a curved neck and a bean-shaped head. Add four straight legs with hooves and a wavy tail. Draw a bumpy mane down the neck, a triangle ear and a tall triangle horn. Finish with an eye, a nostril and a smile, then color it in. That is the standing unicorn, number 25, and every whole unicorn in the oldest group starts the same way. Draw it about the size of a hand in the middle of a letter-size sheet, so the legs have room below the body and the horn has room above the head. For a younger child, start with the unicorn face instead: one circle, two ears, a horn and three curls.

What is the fastest way to draw a unicorn?

Put a horn on something your child can already draw. A circle with two ears and a horn is a unicorn face in under a minute, and the same horn turns a donut, a balloon, a cupcake or a cat into a unicorn. The other quick trick is the hand-traced unicorn: trace your child's hand with the thumb sticking up, and the thumb becomes the neck and head while the four fingers become the legs. For a two-year-old, the horn can be the whole drawing: two lines that meet at a point, stripes across it and dots for sparkles, which is number 2.

Which unicorn drawings suit each age?

Sort them by the shapes they need. The Merck Manual gives average ages of about 3 for copying a circle, 4 for a cross and 5 for a triangle, MedlinePlus puts a square at about 4, and Children's Hospital of Orange County lists copying complex shapes such as a diamond among the skills of six- and seven-year-olds. Before copying comes imitating: Vancouver Coastal Health's pediatric therapists note that a child can draw a stroke straight after watching you draw it some time before they can copy it from a picture. So faces and round treats come first, square cakes and castles next, and whole unicorns with many overlapping parts last.

Ages are averages from the Merck Manual, MedlinePlus and Children's Hospital of Orange County, and the Merck table notes that they vary greatly. A horn is a triangle, so in the youngest group it is drawn as two lines that meet at a point, or a grown-up draws it.

Why does my child's unicorn look like a person?

Because a child's first animals usually do. The child-art researcher Rhoda Kellogg observed that children's first attempts at animals are hard to tell apart from their drawings of people (Kellogg, quoted by the University of Bologna's Museo Officina dell'Educazione). In a Lithuanian study of 168 children aged 3 to 6, the younger ones tended to draw a dog standing upright like a person, while the older ones usually drew it horizontal. When 123 Italian preschoolers drew a dog, 40 percent gave it a tail and only 17 percent drew four vertical legs. The French researcher Georges-Henri Luquet noticed that children mostly draw animals from the side and people from the front, sometimes mixing the two views in one picture, as in a horse and rider (Huzjak, 2013). A four-year-old's unicorn standing on two legs with a big smile is right on time.

How do you help a child draw a unicorn without taking over?

Draw alongside them rather than for them: show one step at a time on your own paper, copy their marks instead of handing them a finished model, describe what you see, and let the unicorn change. These habits come from early childhood teachers, therapists and researchers, not from art lessons.

• Show one step at a time, on your own paper. Imitating comes before copying, so for the youngest, draw step 1 on your sheet and let them do it on theirs. For under-fours, keep the finished step 4 out of sight so the colored picture doesn't become the target.
• Copy them, too. Michigan State University Extension suggests copying your child's scribbles and circles rather than drawing your own picture, because a child who is focused on how good your drawing is tends to be less imaginative.
• Say what you see. Robert Schirrmacher's classic advice on talking with young children about art is to skip "What is it?" and the all-purpose "nice", and talk about the colors, lines and shapes instead. With a unicorn, that might be "you gave it a really curly tail."
• Put a photo of a real horse next to the paper for the older ones. In a Croatian study, half of the zebras that older kindergartners drew from memory had smiling human faces and none had knees. Drawn from a photo, none had human faces and 7 of 16 had knees.
• Start with chunky crayons. NHS therapists in Dorset note that large, chubby pencils are easier to grasp at first. Grip takes years: in one study, 48% of children aged three to three and a half used a mature grip, against 90% of those aged between six and a half and seven.

Easy unicorn drawings for ages 2 and 3

These 12 are built from circles, dots, curves and straight lines. Most children copy a circle at around three and can draw a line straight after watching you draw one, so draw each step on your own paper first and let them copy it. The horn is really a triangle, which most children copy at around five, so draw it as two lines that meet at a point, or draw it for them. Tracing a hand is a grown-up job too. For more drawings in the same four steps, our space drawings for kids are sorted the same way.

1. Unicorn face. Shapes: a circle, curves, small circles, dots. Draw a big circle for the head. Add two pointed ears and a tall, thin horn on top. Draw three little circles for the mane, stripes on the horn, two dot eyes and a smile. Color the horn gold, the mane pink, purple and blue, and add pink cheeks.

Unicorn fact: The word unicorn comes from the Latin unicornis, made from uni, meaning single, and cornu, meaning horn (Oxford Learner's Dictionaries).

2. Unicorn horn. Shapes: two long lines, a curve, wavy lines. Draw two long lines that meet in a point at the top, and join them at the bottom with a curve. Add four curvy stripes across it. Draw a few sparkles and dots around it. Color the horn gold, the stripes pink, the sparkles white and the background purple.

Unicorn fact: Early pictures of unicorns had straight horns. Artists began drawing twisty spiral horns only after sailors started trading narwhal tusks (Cleveland Museum of Art).

3. Sleepy unicorn. Shapes: a long puffy shape, a circle, curves, zigzags. Draw a long, puffy pillow across the bottom. Draw a round head resting on it, with two ears and a horn. Give it closed, curved eyes with lashes, a smile, two Zs, stripes on the horn and dot stars. Color the sky dark blue, the pillow purple and the horn gold, and add pink cheeks.

Unicorn fact: Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his notebook that a wild unicorn would forget its fierceness, walk up to a seated girl and fall asleep in her lap (Leonardo's notebooks, Project Gutenberg).

4. Unicorn donut. Shapes: two circles, a wavy ring, short lines. Draw a big circle with a small circle in the middle. Draw a wavy ring inside it for the icing, then two ears and a horn on top. Add short lines for sprinkles and two curved, smiling eyes near the bottom. Color the donut light brown, the icing pink and the horn gold, with sprinkles in lots of colors.

Unicorn fact: An English rhyme book from 1843 says the lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown, and some people gave them plum cake (Traditional Nursery Songs of England, Project Gutenberg).

5. Unicorn balloon. Shapes: an oval, a small knot, a wavy line, dots. Draw a big oval. Add two ears and a horn on top, a little knot at the bottom and a wavy string. Give it two dot eyes, a smile, a shine line and stripes on the horn. Color the balloon purple, the horn gold and the cheeks pink.

Unicorn fact: In Japanese, kirin means a giraffe, and it is also the name of the one-horned qilin from old Chinese legends (Tokyo National Museum).

6. Hand-traced unicorn. Shapes: a traced hand, a small triangle, curly lines. Trace around your child's hand with the fingers pointing down and the thumb sticking up: the thumb is the neck and head, and the fingers are the legs. Add an ear, a horn, a dot eye and a nostril on the thumb. Draw curly lines for the mane and tail, and a line for the ground. Color the hand white, the fingertips purple for hooves, the horn gold and the page mint green.

Unicorn fact: Around 1478 to 1480, Leonardo da Vinci drew a pen sketch of a young woman with a unicorn. It is now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Louvre).

7. Unicorn egg. Shapes: an egg shape, a zigzag, circles. Draw a big egg shape. Draw a zigzag crack across the middle and a little horn poking out of the top. Add circles for spots, stripes on the horn and some sparkles. Color the egg mint green, the spots pink and purple and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: About 4,000 years ago, people in the Indus Valley carved small stone seals, and one at the Cleveland Museum of Art shows a one-horned animal the museum calls a unicorn (Cleveland Museum of Art).

8. Unicorn in a cloud. Shapes: a bumpy cloud, a circle, small circles. Draw a bumpy cloud across the bottom. Draw a round head peeking out of it, with two ears and a horn. Add three little circles for the mane, dot eyes, a smile, stripes on the horn and a few dot stars. Color the sky light blue, the cloud and the head white and the mane pink, purple and yellow.

Unicorn fact: The qilin, a one-horned creature from Chinese stories, may look fierce, but it is kind, and it floats along so it does not squash the grass (Victoria and Albert Museum).

9. Unicorn lollipop. Shapes: a circle, a spiral, straight lines. Draw a big circle with a stick under it made of two straight lines. Draw a spiral inside the circle (a grown-up can do this part). Add two ears and a horn on top and a sparkle on each side. Color the lollipop pink with a white spiral, the stick gray and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: The Lady and the Unicorn is a set of six tapestries woven around 1500. Five of them show the senses, including taste, and a unicorn appears in every one (Musée de Cluny).

10. Unicorn cupcake. Shapes: straight lines, bumps, curves. Draw the cupcake case with four straight lines, wider at the top. Add a bumpy frosting top and three lines down the case. Draw two ears and a horn on the frosting, closed eyes, pink cheeks and a few dot sprinkles. Color the case blue, the frosting and ears pink and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: In the Aberdeen Bestiary, a medieval book of animals at the University of Aberdeen, the pages about the unicorn have gone missing (University of Aberdeen).

11. Unicornfish. Shapes: an oval, a V-shaped tail, a bump. Draw a long oval for the body. Add a V-shaped tail, a fin along the top and a bump sticking out of the forehead for the horn. Draw a dot eye, a little mouth, three spots and some bubbles. Color the fish teal, the tail and fin blue, the horn light blue and the water pale blue.

Unicorn fact: Unicornfish are named for the bony horn between their eyes, and no one knows yet what the bluespine unicornfish uses its horn for (Georgia Aquarium).

12. Snow unicorn. Shapes: two circles, straight lines, dots. Draw a small circle on top of a big circle. Add two ears and a horn on the head, and stick arms with twig fingers. Give it dot eyes, two dot nostrils, a scarf, two dot buttons and stripes on the horn. Color the sky light blue, the snow white, the horn gold and the scarf red.

Unicorn fact: The real "unicorn of the sea" lives in icy water: narwhals live in the Arctic Ocean and can dive almost 4,000 feet deep to catch fish, squid and shrimp (NOAA Fisheries).

Make it real

Turn their unicorn into a plush toy, a photo or a film

Photograph the drawing and see it three ways, free and watermarked, before you decide on anything.

Make a drawing real

Unicorn drawings for ages 4 and 5

These 12 add the squares, crosses and triangles that four- and five-year-olds are learning to copy: a square cake, a castle of rectangles, a criss-crossed cone, triangle ears and horns. Several turn another animal into a unicorn, which makes a good game for this age: ask what else would look good with a horn. Two of them are real animals, or close to it, so read the facts under the narwhal and the dinosaur out loud.

13. Unicorn head. Shapes: a bean shape, long lines, triangles, a bumpy mane. Draw the head side-on, like a bean with a rounded nose, and two long lines down for the neck. Add a triangle ear, a tall triangle horn and a bumpy mane down the back of the neck. Draw the eye with lashes, a nostril, a smile, stripes on the horn and two little flowers in the mane. Color the mane purple, the horn gold and the flowers pink.

Unicorn fact: Seen from the side, an Arabian oryx's two long horns can look like one, and many people believe this helped start the unicorn legend (IUCN).

14. Unicorn ice cream cone. Shapes: a round scoop, a triangle, crossing lines. Draw a round scoop with a wavy, drippy bottom. Draw a triangle cone underneath with criss-cross lines on it. Add two ears, a horn, closed eyes with lashes, pink cheeks and sprinkles. Color the scoop and ears purple, the cone tan and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: Unicorn horn was once sold as a cure for poison and said to be worth its weight in gold, but it was really narwhal tusk (Royal College of Pharmacy Museum).

15. Caticorn (a cat with a horn). Shapes: a circle, triangles, a tall rounded shape. Draw a circle for the head and a tall rounded shape under it for the body. Add two triangle ears, a triangle horn between them, a curly tail and two paws. Draw dot eyes, a little triangle nose, a mouth, whiskers and triangles inside the ears. Color the cat purple, the insides of the ears and the nose pink and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: About 2,000 years ago, the Roman writer Pliny described a one-horned beast with a horse's body, a deer's head, an elephant's feet and a boar's tail (Pliny, Natural History, on Theoi).

16. Narwhal. Shapes: a long oval, triangles, a long thin triangle. Draw a long body with a rounded front and a pointed back. Add a tail with two flukes, a flipper and a long, thin tusk coming out of the front. Draw an eye, a smile, spots on the back, lines across the tusk, waves and bubbles. Color the narwhal gray with darker spots, the tusk cream and the sea blue.

Unicorn fact: A narwhal's tusk is really a tooth that grows out through the front of its jaw, usually on males, and it can grow up to 9.8 feet long (NOAA Fisheries).

17. Unicorn cake. Shapes: a square, an oval, a drippy line, triangles. Draw a big square for the cake on a flat oval plate. Draw a drippy line across the top, two ears and a horn. Add closed eyes with lashes, pink cheeks and two flowers for the mane. Color the cake cream, the icing pink, the plate purple and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: In a church in Utrecht, candlesticks were set on the pointed tips of "unicorn horns" on feast days. The horns were really narwhal teeth (Rijksmuseum).

18. Unicorn rocking horse. Shapes: a rounded rectangle, straight lines, a long curve. Draw a long rounded body, a neck and a head. Add four straight legs that slant out to a long curved rocker underneath. Draw the mane, ear, horn, tail, a saddle and the face. Color the horse white, the mane and tail blue, the saddle red and the rocker brown.

Unicorn fact: X-rays of Raphael's painting Lady with Unicorn showed a dog painted underneath, in the spot where the small unicorn now sits on her lap (Galleria Borghese).

19. Unicorn headband. Shapes: two curves, triangles, circles. Draw a curved band, like a rainbow made of two lines. Add a tall horn in the middle and an ear on each side. Draw flowers from small circles, some leaves, pink insides for the ears and stripes on the horn. Color the band pink, the horn gold and the flowers purple, blue, pink and yellow.

Unicorn fact: Botanists have identified 85 of the 101 plants woven into the Unicorn Tapestries at The Met Cloisters in New York (The Met).

20. Baby unicorn. Shapes: a circle, a tall rounded shape, rounded rectangles. Draw a circle for the head and a tall rounded body under it. Add two ears, a horn and two front legs with hooves. Draw a three-curl mane, closed eyes with lashes, a smile, cheeks and a curly tail. Color the unicorn white, the mane and tail pink and purple, the hooves purple and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: An early Christian book called the Physiologus, probably first written in Greek around 1,800 years ago, said the unicorn was a little animal like a baby goat (Heidelberg University Library).

21. Unicorn castle. Shapes: rectangles, triangles, squares, a circle. Draw two tall rectangles for towers and a shorter one between them. Add a triangle roof on each tower, three square battlements and an arched door. Draw stripes on the roofs to turn them into unicorn horns, two flags, two windows and a round window with a unicorn peeking out. Color the castle purple, the roofs gold with pink stripes and the door brown.

Unicorn fact: Stirling Castle in Scotland has seven new hand-woven tapestries closely based on the old Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries now in New York (Historic Environment Scotland).

22. Dinosaur unicorn. Shapes: an oval, long lines, rectangles, triangles. Draw a big oval body, a long neck and a small oval head. Add four rectangle legs and a long pointed tail. Draw a horn on the head, little triangle spikes along the back, an eye, a smile and spots. Color the dinosaur mint green with darker spots, the spikes pink and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: Centrosaurus, a real dinosaur that lived in what is now Canada about 75 million years ago, had one horn on its snout (Natural History Museum, London).

23. Unicorn in a teacup. Shapes: a half circle, ovals, curves. Draw a teacup: a half circle with an oval on top, sitting on a long, flat oval saucer. Add a handle and a round head peeking over the rim, with ears and a horn. Draw dot eyes, two hooves resting on the rim, spots on the cup and two sparkles. Color the cup pink with white spots, the tea brown, the saucer purple and the horn gold.

Unicorn fact: About 2,400 years ago, the Greek writer Ctesias claimed that people who drank from cups made of the horn were kept safe from poison (Ctesias, Indica, on Theoi).

24. Unicorn piñata. Shapes: rectangles, triangles, zigzags. Draw three rectangles: a long one for the body, a tall one for the neck and one for the head. Add four rectangle legs, a triangle horn and a triangle ear. Draw zigzag stripes across it, an eye, a nostril and a fringe tail. Color the piñata pink with purple, blue and yellow stripes, purple hooves and a gold horn.

Unicorn fact: In 2013, the investor Aileen Lee called US software companies started since 2003 and worth over $1 billion the "Unicorn Club", and she counted only 39 of them (TechCrunch).

Can a unicorn drawing be turned into something real?

Yes. Photograph the finished drawing, and our Drawing Made Real studio brings it back three ways at once: as a real-life photograph, as a still from an animated film and as a plush toy. We tried it on our own crayon unicorn, number 25 below. The pink mane, the purple tail and hooves, the striped gold horn and the four stick-straight legs all came back as drawn, because the studio is built to keep a child's design rather than tidy it up. You see all three versions free and watermarked, usually within a couple of minutes, and nothing prints until you choose one. A jigsaw puzzle, canvas or fleece blanket starts at $59, a framed canvas at $79 and a Christmas ornament at $29, with free US shipping, or the high-resolution file alone is $5. The photo is deleted within 24 hours and never used to train AI.

Unicorn drawings for ages 6 and 7

These 12 are whole unicorns, built from many parts that overlap: a body, a neck, a head, four legs, a tail and a mane. The first one, the standing unicorn, is the base for most of the rest, so start there. Two come with real history, the Siberian unicorn and the royal unicorn on a shield, and number 30 puts your child on the unicorn's back.

25. Standing unicorn. Shapes: an oval, curves, long thin legs, a bumpy mane. Draw an oval body, a curved neck and a bean-shaped head. Add four straight legs with hooves, a wavy tail and a line for the ground. Draw the bumpy mane, an ear, a striped horn, the eye, a nostril, a smile and a few flowers. Color the unicorn white, the mane pink, the tail and hooves purple and the grass green.

Unicorn fact: More than 2,000 years ago, a Greek writer named Ctesias said India had wild donkeys as big as horses, each with one horn on its forehead (Ctesias, Indica, on Theoi).

26. Galloping unicorn. Shapes: an oval, curves, bent legs. Draw the oval body, neck and head, just like the standing unicorn. Add the legs mid-gallop, front legs reaching forward and bent, back legs pushing out behind, then the tail and the ground. Draw the mane, ear, horn and face, three speed lines and puffs of dust. Color the unicorn white, the mane and tail blue and the grass green.

Unicorn fact: Ctesias said these one-horned animals start running slowly, then go faster and faster, and no horse can catch them (Ctesias, Indica, on Theoi).

27. Winged unicorn. Shapes: an oval, curves, a feathery wing. Draw the oval body, neck and head. Add four legs, a tail and a big feathery wing rising from behind the back, with two feather lines. Draw the mane, ear, horn and face, two clouds under the hooves and some stars. Color the unicorn and wing white, the mane and tail lilac and the sky light blue.

Unicorn fact: In Greek myth, the winged horse Pegasus was tamed by the hero Bellerophon, who rode him into battle against the fire-breathing Chimera (Theoi Project).

28. Unicorn and rainbow. Shapes: five curves, bumpy clouds, a small unicorn. Draw a rainbow of five curved lines with a cloud at each end. Draw a smaller unicorn standing in front of it, with its body, neck, head, legs and tail, and the ground. Add the mane, ear, horn and face. Color the rainbow red, orange, yellow, green and blue, and the unicorn white with a purple mane.

Unicorn fact: In old Chinese stories, the qilin has a deer's body, an ox's tail, horse hooves, one horn and five-colored fur, and it appears only when the world is governed well (Tokyo National Museum).

29. Unicorn under the Moon. Shapes: an oval, curves, folded legs, a crescent. Draw the oval body, neck and head of a unicorn lying down. Add the folded legs, the tail and a hill. Draw the mane, ear, horn, a sleepy closed eye, a crescent Moon and some stars. Color the sky dark blue, the hill dark green, the Moon yellow and the mane lilac.

Unicorn fact: A group of stars called Monoceros, the Unicorn, first appeared on a map by the Dutch mapmaker Petrus Plancius around 1612 (Brown University Library).

30. Child riding a unicorn. Shapes: an oval, curves, a circle, rounded rectangles. Draw a standing unicorn's body, neck, head, legs and tail, and the ground. Add the mane, ear, horn and face. Draw a child sitting on its back: a round head with hair, a body, one arm holding the mane and one leg hanging down with a shoe. Color the unicorn white with a pink mane, and give the child a yellow top, blue trousers and red shoes.

Unicorn fact: Medieval animal books said a wild unicorn could be caught only by a maiden in the woods, and that it would lay its head in her lap (Getty).

31. Unicorn and foal. Shapes: ovals, curves, two sizes. Draw a big unicorn on the left: body, neck, head, legs and tail. Draw a small foal on the right facing it, built the same way but much smaller, and the ground. Add manes, ears, horns and faces to both. Color both unicorns white, the mother's mane purple and the foal's mane pink.

Unicorn fact: The writer Aelian said that when hunters came, the one-horned wild donkeys of India let their young foals graze behind them while the grown-ups fought to protect them (Aelian, On Animals, on Theoi).

32. Unicorn in a meadow. Shapes: an oval, a long bending neck, flowers. Draw the oval body and a long neck bending down so the head reaches toward the grass. Add four legs, a tail and the ground. Draw the mane along the neck, the ear, the horn, the face, flowers in the grass and a sun with rays. Color the sky blue, the grass green, the mane pink and the sun yellow.

Unicorn fact: In the Unicorn Tapestries at The Met Cloisters, the unicorn has a goat's beard and split hooves like a goat (Metropolitan Museum Journal).

33. Carousel unicorn. Shapes: a scalloped roof, two long lines, an oval, a unicorn. Draw a roof with a scalloped edge at the top, a pole down the middle and a flat oval base. Draw a unicorn on the pole, trotting, with its legs bent. Add the mane, ear, horn, face and a saddle, with the pole showing above and below the unicorn. Color the roof red and white, the pole and base gold, the saddle blue and the mane pink.

Unicorn fact: W. Franklin Dove, a University of Maine scientist, moved the horn buds of young animals, and one of his bulls grew up with a single horn (Scientific American).

34. Siberian unicorn. Shapes: a big rounded body, a long head, thick legs. Draw a big rounded body with a hump at the shoulders and a long, low head. Add four thick legs, a very long horn on the forehead, a small ear and a short tail. Draw zigzag tufts of fur, an eye, a nostril, a mouth and dry grass. Color the animal brown, the horn cream, the grass tan and the sky light blue.

Unicorn fact: The "Siberian unicorn", a giant rhino named Elasmotherium sibiricum, lived until at least 39,000 years ago. No one has ever found its horn, but scientists think a big bump on its skull once held one (Nature Ecology & Evolution, Natural History Museum, London).

35. Royal unicorn on a shield. Shapes: a shield shape, a unicorn head, zigzags, small ovals. Draw a shield with a flat top and two sides that curve down to a point. Draw a unicorn's head and neck inside it, with an ear, a horn and a long mane. Add a zigzag crown around its neck, a chain of little ovals, the eye and stripes on the horn. Color the shield blue, the unicorn white, the mane lilac and the crown, chain and horn gold.

Unicorn fact: Scotland's national animal is the unicorn, even though unicorns are creatures from stories and not real animals (Scotland.org).

36. Unicorn at the stream. Shapes: an oval, a long bending neck, wavy lines. Draw the oval body and a neck bending down so the head is low. Add the legs, the tail and a bank that slopes down to the water. Draw the mane, ear and face, the horn dipping into the stream, ripples around its tip, waves and reeds. Color the water blue, the grass green and the mane blue.

Unicorn fact: In a tapestry at The Met Cloisters woven around 1500, a unicorn dips its horn into a stream while other animals wait to drink, because legend said its horn could make water safe (The Met).

What color is a unicorn?

Any color your child likes, but the oldest written description in the West is not white all over. Around 2,400 years ago the Greek writer Ctesias described one-horned wild animals of India with white bodies, dark red heads and bluish eyes, and a horn that was white at the base, black in the middle and bright red at the tip (Ctesias, Indica, on Theoi; Cleveland Museum of Art). Centuries later, the Roman writer Pliny gave his one-horned beast a single black horn sticking out from the middle of its forehead (Pliny, Natural History, on LacusCurtius). The pinks, purples and rainbows in this post are our own, so let your child pick, and if they want to try the ancient version, number 25 in white with a red head and a three-colored horn looks great.

Are unicorns real?

No. Unicorns are creatures from stories, but several real animals carry the name, and some of them probably helped start the legend. In one study, when 176 children aged 2 to 11 rated how real 13 figures were, their ratings put unicorns in a group with made-up story characters in one sample and with dragons, ghosts and aliens in another. Here are the real ones, three of which you can draw above.

The Siberian unicorn weighed up to 3.5 tonnes, up to twice as much as a modern rhino, and shared the land with modern humans and Neanderthals, according to the Natural History Museum in London.

Narwhal tusks fed the legend for centuries. In medieval Europe they were sold as unicorn horns, and a "unicorn horn" could be worth ten times its weight in gold. In 1638 the Danish naturalist Ole Worm showed, with a narwhal skull that still had its tusk, that the horns were narwhal tusks, and the trade began to drop (Cleveland Museum of Art). A Danish royal throne used at coronations from 1671 to 1840 was said to be made of unicorn horn, and it is narwhal tusk too (The Royal Danish Collection).

What is a unicorn with wings called?

A winged unicorn, which is what number 27 is. Fans often call it an alicorn, though museums use that word for unicorn horn itself: traders in medieval Europe sold narwhal tusk as "alicorn", a prized medicine, ground into powder or made into tableware (Wessex Museums). A winged horse is a Pegasus, after the winged horse of Greek myth (Theoi Project). Winged one-horned beasts are old, too: in the medieval Islamic world, people imagined a one-horned creature called the karkadann, from the usual Arabic word for rhinoceros, and it was often drawn with wings (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Pegasus has a constellation named after him, and so does the unicorn: Monoceros, which first appeared on a star map by the Dutch mapmaker Petrus Plancius around 1612 (Brown University Library).

Why is the unicorn Scotland's national animal?

Scotland's official heraldry court, the Court of the Lord Lyon, says the unicorn became a royal badge sometime after 1381 and calls it the national beast of Scotland (Court of the Lord Lyon). On the royal coat of arms it wears a crown around its neck with a long chain, to show it was tamed by the Scottish crown (National Records of Scotland), and King James III struck gold coins called unicorns (Dictionaries of the Scots Language). Scotland's arms once had two unicorns; after James VI of Scotland also became king of England in 1603, he swapped one of them for England's lion (Forever Edinburgh). That is why, on the United Kingdom's royal coat of arms today, the lion stands for England and the unicorn for Scotland (GOV.UK). Number 35 is that unicorn, crown, chain and all.

What can you do with a unicorn drawing once it's done?

Hang it up, play with it, or keep it as something that lasts longer than paper. Here is what we make from children's drawings, and from a photo of the child who drew it.

• Watch it come to life. In the Curious Theatre, a free drawing toy for ages 2 to 7, the drawing becomes a paper puppet on a lit stage, and every key or tap makes it play. Nothing is uploaded.
• Make it real. Our Drawing Made Real studio turns the unicorn into a real-life photo, an animated film still and a plush toy, free to see, and prints the one you pick on a puzzle, canvas or blanket from $59.
• Keep it in thread or metal. We stitch a child's drawing in real thread on a T-shirt, sweatshirt or hoodie, from $49 for a tee or a kids' sweatshirt, and you approve the stitching before anything is sewn. Or it can go on a necklace, which can be cut to the drawing's own shape, from $59.
• Stand them next to their own unicorn. If your child would rather meet a unicorn than draw one, our Unicorn Meadow world paints them beside a white unicorn in a wildflower meadow from a single photo. For more ways to keep children's art, see our guide to children's artwork gifts.

Frequently asked questions