Draw Anything
Drawing ideas for beginners
What to draw first, why, and a simple one-week plan that turns drawing into a habit.
The best drawing ideas for beginners aren’t the ones that look impressive — they’re the ones that teach you something while still being fun. Here’s what to draw first, why, and a one-week plan that turns it into a habit.
Start with these five
- Spheres, boxes and cylindersDraw a ball, a dice and a can, then shade them. These three shapes are inside almost everything else. The basic shading guide shows how.
- A heart and a starSymmetry practice. The heart and star tutorials use guides so both sides match.
- A catYour first animal. The cat tutorial is two circles and a few triangles.
- A mug from real lifeYour first drawing from observation. Ellipses are tricky and incredibly useful.
- A faceThe face tutorial teaches proportion: eyes halfway down the head.
A one-week beginner plan
| Day | Draw | You’re learning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A page of lines and circles, then a heart | Confident strokes, symmetry |
| 2 | A ball, a box and a can, shaded | Light and shadow |
| 3 | A flower and a tree | Organic shapes, overlap |
| 4 | A cat or dog | Building animals from shapes |
| 5 | Something on your desk, from life | Observation |
| 6 | A house with a car outside | Composition, colour schemes |
| 7 | Redraw day 1 and day 4 — then compare | Seeing your progress |
Spend ten to fifteen minutes a day. Save each drawing as a PNG so you can compare at the end of the week.
Start day one now
Open the free canvas and draw a page of lines and circles — no download, no account.
Open the sketchpad →
Ideas sorted by what they teach
Line control
- A spiral from the centre outwards
- A maze
- Waves of different sizes
- Your name in bubble letters
Proportion
- Your hand, from life
- A horse (long legs are the test)
- A self-portrait using the face guides
Colour
- The same house in three colour schemes — see colour theory
- A sunset with only warm colours
- A neon drawing on black
Imagination
- An animal mash-up: half cat, half butterfly
- A dragon with your own design of wings
- Anything from the idea generator
Three beginner habits that matter more than talent
- Shapes before details. Every tutorial on this site starts with guide shapes for this reason.
- Lots of short drawings beat one long one. You learn from finishing.
- Use references. Looking at a photo isn’t cheating; it’s how professionals work. The trace tool lets you draw over your own photos.
Keep going
Take the canvas with you
The browser studio is a taste. The app is the full art creation studio — layers, a big brush library, photo tracing, infinite colour, a new drawing idea every day, home screen widgets and timelapse sharing, on every device you own.
What you get
- Price Free to download, with an optional PRO subscription
- Includes Layers, pen, pencil, marker, crayon, watercolour, fountain pen and fill tools, daily ideas, widgets, timelapse sharing
- PRO unlocks Rainbow Pencil, Import Images, Infinite Colour, Gravity Lines
- Platforms iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android
- Age rating 4+
- Languages English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese