All worksheets / Art
Official Requirements & Fillable Workbook · 2026 Edition
Art is a doing badge with a vocabulary attached. Requirements 2 and 3 give you the language — the elements of art and the principles of design — and requirement 4 makes you render the same subject four different ways, which teaches more about a medium than any amount of reading. Keep your work: your counselor will want to see it.
Every requirement for the Art merit badge, word for word as published, with room to write under each one on the printed worksheet.
Discuss the following with your counselor:
Discuss with your counselor the following terms and elements of art: line, value, shape, form, space, color, and texture. Show examples of each element.
Discuss with your counselor the six principles of design: rhythm, balance, proportion, variety, emphasis, and unity.
Render a subject of your choice in FOUR of these ways:
Do ONE of the following:
With your parent or guardian's permission and your counselor's approval, visit a museum, art exhibit, art gallery, artists' co-op, or artist's workshop. Find out about the art displayed or created there. Discuss what you learned with your counselor.
Find out about three career opportunities in art. Pick one and find out the education, training, and experience required for this profession. Discuss this with your counselor, and explain why this profession might interest you.
Scouting America last revised the Art requirements in 2014. That is the badge, not this sheet — an older year does not mean the worksheet is out of date.
This worksheet was checked against https://www.scouting.org/merit-badges/art/ in Aug 2026 and reproduces the requirements word for word. Both dates are printed on the sheet, so a copy in a binder can always be placed in time.
Requirement text is © Scouting America, reproduced verbatim. The worksheet layout and design are original to this project.
Archery is mostly done on a range, under a certified instructor. Requirement 5 is where the badge is won or lost: you pick recurve/longbow or compound, learn the 11 Steps of Shooting, and then post a qualifying score. Bring this sheet to the range and record scores as you shoot — reconstructing an end from memory afterward does not work.
Architecture asks you to look at buildings the way an architect does — why this material, why this shape, why here. Requirement 4 is the one that takes real care: an accurately scaled floor plan of a room you know, drawn at a quarter inch to the foot. Measure twice. Requirement 3 needs an architect, so arrange that early.
Artificial Intelligence is one of the newest badges, and it has no pamphlet — Scouting America built it around a chatbot called Scoutly instead. Two requirements (2d and 4b) are games you play with your counselor, so they cannot be done alone at a desk. The ethics requirement asks you to write your own guidelines for using AI, which is the most useful thing on this sheet.
Astronomy cannot be finished in a weekend. Requirement 4 wants the Big Dipper or Cassiopeia sketched hours apart, requirement 6 wants the Moon on four nights in a week, and requirement 5 wants a planet chart covering the next 12 months. Start the observations early and record the date and time on every sketch — that detail is part of the requirement, not a nicety.
