Things to draw when you’re bored

Boredom is a great time to draw, because nothing is at stake. These ideas are sorted from “start in five seconds” to “grab a friend”. Pick one, open the free canvas, and set a timer for five or ten minutes.

Five-minute ideas

Quick enough to start right now and finish before you lose interest.

1. Your hand. Trace round it, then turn the fingers into a family of characters.
2. Your breakfast. Whatever you ate this morning, drawn as dramatically as possible.
3. A doodle chain. Draw a squiggle, turn it into something, add another squiggle, repeat.
4. Twenty circles. Fill the page with circles and turn each one into a different thing.
5. A pattern. Stripes, dots, zigzags and waves, filling the whole page.
6. Your initials. Turn the letters into creatures, buildings or plants.
7. A cloud. Draw a cloud shape, then decide what it looks like and add the details.
8. A face in one line. Don’t lift the pointer until the face is done.

Things around you

Look up. Everything near you is a drawing waiting to happen.

1. The view from your window. Just the shapes: rooftops, trees, sky.
2. Your shoes. Shoes are full of curves, laces and texture — great practice.
3. A houseplant. Leaves overlapping each other teach depth.
4. Your pet asleep. A sleeping animal holds still and makes lovely round shapes.
5. A mug. Ellipses are the hardest easy shape; a mug is the perfect practice.
6. Your keys. Small objects drawn big look surprisingly dramatic.
7. Your desk from above. A map of everything on it.
8. Someone’s back of the head. No face to get wrong, just hair and shapes.

From your imagination

No reference, no rules.

1. A creature that’s two animals. A cat-octopus, a horse-butterfly, a shark-giraffe.
2. Your dream house. Slides between floors, a library tower, a pool on the roof.
3. A monster that lives under the bed. What does it eat? Draw its dinner.
4. A new planet. Its landscape, its weather and one inhabitant.
5. A shop that sells something impossible. Bottled thunder, second-hand dreams.
6. Yourself as a superhero. What’s your power and your costume?
7. A city in the trees. Rope bridges, lanterns, houses in the branches.
8. A vehicle for a snail. Snails are slow. Help them.

Little challenges

When you want to stretch a bit.

1. Only three colours. Pick three and use nothing else.
2. Draw with your other hand. The wobbly lines are half the fun.
3. The same object three ways. Realistic, cartoon and as a pattern.
4. A ten-second drawing. Then a one-minute version of the same thing.
5. Draw it from memory. A bicycle, a dog, a phone — then compare to the real thing.
6. A neon drawing. Black paper, glowing lines — try the neon canvas.
7. A comic in four boxes. Beginning, problem, twist, ending.
8. A tiny world in a jar. A whole scene, but it has to fit inside the glass.

Drawing games

Better with someone else.

1. Pictionary. One draws, everyone guesses. Use the idea generator for words.
2. Exquisite corpse. One person draws a head, folds or hides it, the next draws the body.
3. Finish my squiggle. Draw a random line for someone else to turn into a picture.
4. Draw the description. One person describes a picture, the other draws it without seeing it.

Make boredom drawing a habit

Keep a “bored list” of ideas you liked, and save every drawing as a PNG — even the bad ones. Scrolling back through a month of five-minute doodles is the most motivating thing you can do as a beginner, because the improvement is obvious. If you want structure, the beginner ideas page has a one-week plan.

Keep going