One of the most common questions art teachers receive is “What should I draw?” There are so many things all around us that make great subjects for drawing; we just need subtle hints to see the hidden beauty in everyday objects, people, and settings and to be able to recognize their value as muses.
This article will provide you with a wide variety of cool drawing ideas to keep you busy with your sketchbook for quite some time. Read on to get inspired, and start drawing today!
Contents
Drawing Skills Development
If you’re looking to improve specific drawing skills or just get better at accurate drawing in general, some drawing ideas serve as great practice for artists.
Below are a few of the most important skills to hone.
If you find you need more help than just inspiration for ideas, check out this article on drawing tutorials or this one on the best online art classes. If you’ve hit an “art block,” check out this article for some practical tips.
Linear Perspective – Street Corners
It is important to practice perspective for realistic drawing. If it has been a while or you have never drawn 2 point perspective, it is a good idea to review the rules of linear perspective first. A fun and easy drawing idea is to sketch a street corner in 2 point perspective where all horizontal straight lines converge to one of 2 vanishing points.
Aerial Perspective
Aerial perspective is how tiny particles floating in the atmosphere change how things look the further in the distance they are.
Mountains in the background tend to be cooler in color, lighter in value, and have less detail than those in the foreground. While not terribly difficult to do in paint, it can be a challenging drawing exercise but it will certainly build your skills.
Foreshortening
When an object is perpendicular to the picture plane and stretches from the distance to the frame of the drawing, things can look distorted. Based on linear perspective, things closer to the picture plane will look much bigger than the same object that recedes in the distance.
Value Studies
Value can be one of the most important elements of design for creating realistic and engaging artwork.
Roughly drawing a scene or object with little detail, but emphasizing subtle value changes through exaggeration can help an artist understand how the lighting of the scene affects the objects and the overall composition.
Negative Space
Negative space is the area around the objects in your drawing and can be more important than the shapes of the objects themselves for getting the proportion of things accurate.
Try drawing around the outlines, or contours, of the objects in your scene to make them “appear.” Avoid the temptation to outline the object first.
Upside Down Objects
Our minds tend to trick us when it comes to drawing objects or scenes. Trying to make 3-dimensional objects look real on a 2-dimensional surface can take some mental gymnastics.
Several scholars on the subject suggest that turning your reference photograph upside down distracts the part of the brain that tries to trick us. Give it a try!
Food
There are so many foods that come in a dizzying variety of forms that this article could be filled with just food ideas. Still, life is a genre with a long history, and artists use diverse approaches to portray simple objects, often involving food. Here is just a small sample of the options available to you to inspire your drawing practice.
Packaged Foods
Candy, packaged meats, chips, and pickled vegetables are just some of the food products that provide interesting characteristics for you to practice your sketching skills. Food labels and containers are designed to catch the consumer’s eye, so their colors, fonts, and textures make for excellent drawing ideas.
Pop Culture Icon Foods
Andy Warhol became famous for his Campbell’s soup can works. This is partly because people are attracted to things they are familiar with, and the tomato soup can was in most households at one point or another.
Inside Fruit
The traditional still life set-up with vases, grapes, and other objects showing abundance and elevated economic status has become cliche and doesn’t command attention the way it used to. But, the insides of fruits and vegetables aren’t as common and often have interesting shapes and textures.
Foods Paired with Unusual Objects
While people are attracted to things they are familiar with, they are also intrigued by novel, unusual things. We tend to think longer and harder about unique things or situations than those we see every day.
By pairing dissimilar objects together in a still life, you can also create the foundation for obvious or subtle narratives to creep into the minds of the viewer.
Candy
There are many types of candy that come in bright colors, have interesting textures, and cool shapes. This is another drawing idea that is best drawn in colored pencil.
Condiments
Bottles, packages, and other containers of condiments offer many characteristics that will develop drawing skills for artists of any level. These subjects also often carry the iconic recognition discussed earlier.
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Decaying Food
A bowl of perfectly ripe fruit can project positive feelings for a variety of reasons, but sometimes artists want to suggest dark or brooding feelings. Rotting or decaying fruit or other foods can be metaphors for those things in our lives that aren’t so happy and make for an interesting still life. Many popular artworks are anything but happy.
Technology
In the 21st century, technology is undeniably ubiquitous and encompasses a vast array of kinds of items, from cell phones to automobile features, to retro items like T.V.s from the 1960s. Here are some drawing prompts that are sure to inspire those fascinated by technology.
Popular Devices
It seems as though trending electronic devices change weekly, and capturing these items in a drawing can increase the appeal of your work to audiences.
Inside Electronics
Don’t just focus on the objects themselves; the insides of electronic components are filled with interesting colors, shapes, and different patterns.
Old Technology That Was Once New
Older technological devices can be visually interesting because we haven’t seen them much recently, and certain segments of our population may have never seen them before.
Tools
Tools don’t have to be hammers and saws that we typically associate with the term; they can be anything a person (or animal) uses to complete a task. Such a widely interpreted definition can provide drawing subjects to last weeks, months, or years. Tools can be arranged like a still life or be used as an added change to other contexts.
Power Tools
Power tools carry associations with noise, movement, progress, and even danger. These things can subconsciously get the viewer’s heart rate to increase, which means they are responding viscerally to your work.
Hand Tools
Hand tools can evoke more nostalgic associations and suggest more craftsmanship than power tools. Any hand-operated mechanical object can fit this category. If you’re looking to communicate themes of reminiscence or melancholy, an old-fashioned hand drill may be a better choice than a cordless power drill.
Old Tools
Just as in older technology, old tools often have great shapes, materials, and designs. It’s fun to find an old tool and try to figure out what it could have been used for in its prime.
Cooking Tools
There are tons of kitchen gadgets and apparatuses. People tend to have positive associations with food, which can extend to the tools used to make them. Interesting textures, patterns, and materials can make for a visually appealing drawing.
Hardware
Take a stroll down the hardware aisle of a home improvement store, and you will be met with a wealth of potential drawing ideas. Close-ups, organized displays, or randomly strewn nails, screws, or other obscure hardware are great to sketch.
Tools Not Usually Considered Tools
Try looking around your house for things that could be considered tools, but that you wouldn’t normally think of when prompted with the word tool.
The Inside of Your Appliances
Appliances are tools, and just like the inside of fruit or technological devices, the insides of these household items can give you cool ideas!
Plants
Scientific drawings, landscapes, still lifes, and other artistic genres include plants in a variety of ways. Individually or with other specimens, plants are great to study through drawing and sketches. Here are a few easy drawing ideas to get you started.
Potted Plants
Potted plants are great because they can be moved to capture the best lighting or compositional arrangement, and the pots themselves can be interesting to draw.
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Seeds
Seeds come in all shapes, sizes, colors, patterns, and more. You can draw these containers of life in any stage you find interesting, from dormancy to fully germinated and anywhere in between.
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Gardens
Whether in your backyard or at an arboretum, gardens can provide numerous drawing ideas. Additionally, gardens rarely stay the same, so you can revisit the same garden over time for different perspectives or perhaps a series showing how seasons affect the botanical life.
Close-up on Plant Parts
Georgia O’Keeffe was well known for her close-up paintings of flowers and other plant life. Drawing subject matter that is half abstracted and half recognizable can create interest and engage your audience on a conceptual level.
Vehicles
Like technology, vehicles are a part of almost everyone’s life in some way. Vehicles come in so many different sizes and forms and are unique depending on their purpose or environment, which provides the artist with a never-ending pool of drawing ideas.
Bikes
Old bikes, new bikes, motorbikes, spokes of the wheels, springs under the seats, bells, and other aspects of bikes can be fun to draw. Whether you love the Tour de France or just ride your bike to work or school, you can stay busy with this subject for a while.
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Roller Skates
In-line skates, older lace-up skates, and skates that clip onto your regular shoes all have interesting features that can offer interesting sketching ideas.
Cars
You don’t have to be a gearhead to draw cars. Whether antique cars from the early 1900s or futuristic cars from your imagination, automobiles can be crafted in many styles.
The Interior of Your Car
Visual art is largely about how artists see their world. Cars are arguably one of our most intimate spaces, and showing your view of that part of your life can communicate a lot. Using the rearview mirror or other strategic parts of your car’s interior can add subtle symbolic meaning.
Scooters
For younger artists that don’t drive yet, scooters are often the way to get around quickly and easily. Motorized scooters and self-propelled scooters have character and will likely have reminiscent associations for a lot of people.
Space Ships
An imaginary alien rocket ship, actual space vessels from NASA or Starlink, and imaginary futuristic transportation vessels can provide an abundance of drawing ideas. Don’t be afraid to get creative with these; the sky’s not the limit, outer space is!
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Antique Vehicles
Antique vehicles have a lot of character and have changed a lot over the years. Old trucks, cars, and motorcycles have great lines and shapes and, in many cases, interesting weathering or patinas.
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Instruments
Many artists are interested in more than just one art form. For those that also play musical instruments, you can express your passion for both domains (visual art and music) in one artwork.
Instruments as Portraits
Drawing a musical instrument as the main subject of a sketch or drawing, much as you would a rendering of a person, can show your respect and reverence for the object as well as the discipline. Using dramatic light and subduing all other elements of the drawing will communicate a sense of importance to the viewer.
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Close-up of Instrument Parts
Much like Georgia O’Keeffe’s close-ups of flowers, instruments have interesting parts and components that can be visually appealing on an abstract level. One instrument has the potential for 100 or more different compositions of close-up perspectives.
Ensembles
A grouping of instruments alone or an ensemble of players with their instruments can be a great subject to draw. Using fluid, gestural lines and marks can give the feeling of the instruments in action causing the audience to imagine music playing in their minds.
Playing a Song
Listening to music can put you in the right mood to draw. Illustrating your favorite song with instruments, notes, and other music notation will allow your passion for music to shine in your drawing.
Toys
Creating artwork using toys as the subject matter can suggest a variety of narratives or elicit many different emotions. Toys can be nostalgic, uplifting, and even scary, depending on the context and how you choose to portray them. Since color is a big part of most toys, this would be the time to sharpen your colored pencils.
Pop Culture Icon Toys
Many toys are instantly recognizable and have deep associations for us as our childhood is the most influential time of our lives. They can be drawn as is or placed in a variety of contexts to influence the viewer’s interpretation.
Close-up of Toy Parts
By now, you may have sensed a theme of objects being portrayed through close-ups of their parts. We are used to seeing objects as whole, so when an artist isolates parts of the objects, we see them in a new light which tends to make the drawing more interesting.
In Real Life Situations
Many artists personify toys and place them in real-life, human situations for humor or to convey a particular narrative. Humor is a great way to engage viewers of your artwork.
Board Games
Board games are a big part of many people’s lives and bring up fond memories of childhood. Drawing game pieces or other components of a game is a great idea for a simple sketch that can help you work on things like proportion or to practice shading.
Animals
Many people have positive feelings about animals, and their passion can show in their drawings while others are afraid of animals and might choose to explore their fears through art. Either way, there are a lot of options when considering animals as subjects for your art.
Animals In their Habitat
Drawing animals in their habitat will allow you to improve your drawing skills in animal anatomy as well as those of natural environments and landscapes. Artists often struggle with what to use as a background, so placing the animals in their habitat gives you the main subject and an appropriate setting.
Animal Portraits
Pet portraits are very popular, and some artists make their living off of pet portrait commissions. Or you can draw your own pet as a way to celebrate how much they mean to you. As mentioned in the early section about instrument portraits, there are a variety of options on how to portray pets as the main subject in your drawing.
Animal Body Parts
When first learning to draw animals, as with any being, it can be helpful to start with individual body parts.
One of the hardest parts of drawing humans and other animals is getting the proportions of each of the body parts to the body as a whole correct. If you build your confidence in the individual parts first, you can then focus on the whole animal better.
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Wild animals
Wild animals can be majestic and beautiful. Fur, feathers, and scales allow artists to perfect their drawing skills with texture that can be applied to other subjects.
Perhaps you enjoy birdwatching which would make drawing birds perfect for you! Or, a trip to the zoo with your smartphone camera will give you resource images to sketch from for original drawings.
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Dead Animal
You might choose to portray a dead animal as a symbolic representation of sadness, or you may want to convey some social message about how our society treats animals. Artworks don’t have to be limited to positive, happy subjects.
Animals In Human Situations
Cartoons and comics have personified animals for decades. Putting animals in environments and situations in place of humans can create interest and humor.
Bugs
Butterflies, spiders, and beetles are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of crawly or flying creatures you can use as inspiration. Interestingly segmented bodies, colorful patterns, and multitudes of appendages all add visual interest to some cool subjects for drawing ideas.
Life Drawing Ideas
One of the best ways to improve your drawing ability is to draw everyday life. Often, life drawing is intimidating, but it is no different from drawing from photographs; the added difficulty is all in your head. Even when drawing the figure, it’s all about reducing things to basic shapes first and then adding detail after you have gotten your proportions correct.
Crowd of People
If you want to get good fast at drawing people, sit at a park bench, or a seat in a museum, and work on drawing the people that pass by.
Getting the essence of a human’s pose in just a few lines and 10 or 20 seconds is what gesture drawings are all about. When you draw people in motion several times for an hour or so each, you will undoubtedly see growth.
Self Portrait
A favorite subject of many famous artists, drawing yourself from a reflection in a mirror means you don’t need a model or a photograph. It can feel a little weird at first, but after a few tries, you’ll be hooked.
People With Character
People with life experiences often develop character in the features of their bodies, especially their faces.
While society may look at wrinkles and changes in the skin due to aging as negative, they can make people look more interesting and good candidates for drawing.
Choosing celebrities with unique or elaborate hairstyles is a great practice too!
Body Parts
As mentioned earlier in the section about animals, figure drawing poses can be challenging and intimidating. If you are new to figure drawing, it may be helpful to start with individual features, such as drawing hands, legs, or facial features.
Once you gain some confidence in the distinct parts, you can start putting them together as a whole figure. And don’t be ashamed to use references. Here are some great figure drawing poses you can use.
Perhaps you even practice drawing individual eyes, noses, mouths, and ears before you take on the task of drawing faces.
Beings and Other Cool Drawing Ideas
Because small mistakes in the proportion of one body part to another are obvious in a human figure, it may be less intimidating to practice with imaginary beings. Aliens from outer space or fantastical creatures don’t have a standard, you can be freer with your drawing since there isn’t anything, in reality, to compare them to.
Aliens
Extra-terrestrial beings have been portrayed in drawings, paintings, and movies for ages. This great drawing idea gives you the freedom to be as imaginative as you want, either taking characteristics from drawings you’ve seen or making up your alien from scratch. Check out these alien concepts for inspiration.
Fantasy Creatures
Much like aliens, there is plenty of room for creative license when drawing fantasy creatures. You might take inspiration from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or some other fantasy story.
A creative idea is to use a real animal as your foundation and change certain attributes or combine multiple creatures into one, much like mythical creatures of lore.
Morphed Creatures
M.C. Escher was known for morphing one object or creature into another object or creature in stages within one artwork. Morphing creatures or objects is a great way to add some spice to a drawing that would otherwise be too simple or common.
Landscapes
Landscapes don’t have to adhere to traditional farmland or fields with haystacks.
While artists like Van Gogh and Monet were able to add interest to those cliche subjects through their creative use of color and brushstrokes, looking at the idea of landscape through a different
lens can give your drawings more interest.
Your Backyard
If you have a backyard and you spend enough time in it, you may be able to draw it from memory. What is unique about your backyard, and what does it look like to you? Remember, visual art is about how the artist experiences life, so instead of showing what your yard looks like, draw what it feels like.
Local Park
If you don’t have your own backyard, you can always visit a local park and try your hand at plein air art. An interesting take on this idea is to draw the same park during different seasons of the year. A place can look very different in the spring as compared to the summer, fall, or winter.
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Surreal Garden
The surrealists created artworks based off of their dreams. Strange and eerie scenes were typical subjects for artists like Dali, Magritte, and Miro. A neat idea would be to draw a garden and add surreal elements.
Scenic Hikes
Hiking trails often end at a scenic overlook or have beautiful, natural elements, such as waterfalls, along the way. Next time you hike, bring a small sketchbook that fits in your bag or pocket and sketch the beauty around you as you rest.
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Cityscapes
There can be a lot of character in cities, towns, and villages. Whether it is a place you see every day or somewhere you visit on vacation, there are countless cool drawing ideas hidden in every city.
Your House
There is an old adage, “Draw what you know.” Chances are, unless you’ve moved recently, you know your house pretty well. Instead of drawing your house straight on from the front, try drawing it from an unusual perspective or angle.
The Block Your Favorite Restaurant Is On
Storefronts can have a lot of character with signs, awnings, window displays, or unique doorways. The next time you go to your favorite restaurant in town, snap a few pictures so you can get some drawing practice while celebrating a place you enjoy.
Landmarks of your Favorite City to Visit
As was mentioned before, people tend to be drawn to things they are familiar with. If you sketch a famous landmark, people may get more excited about your drawing than if it were somewhere they have never seen or visited. You can be inspired by places you’ve been or those you’d like to visit someday.
A City Block Reclaimed by Nature
Using your imagination, take a city block, or a single building and draw it as if it were post-apocalyptic and weeds and vines have reclaimed the man-made structure. You can even draw buildings or structures that are dominated by gigantic creatures.
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Architecture
There is a lot of room for creativity when drawing architecture. You might enjoy drawing mechanical drawings of buildings, or you might prefer looser renditions of buildings that show your own style. Perhaps you would like to sketch your dream house with all the fancy upgrades you can imagine.
Cultural Architectural Icons
Most people would recognize a drawing of the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower.
A great drawing project is to practice drawing a well-known building that interests you in some way. Maybe it has personal significance for you, or maybe you just like the way it looks.
Traditional Cultural Dwellings
Some cultures have homes that are visually distinct in style due to geographic locations and available materials. Studying a culture by sketching its architecture can be a good way to learn about its people and practices.
Unusual Buildings
Unusual things tend to be more interesting or at least curiosity provoking. Architects like Frank Gehry and Frank Loyd Wright have capitalized on this fact. Spending time drawing unique buildings or other architecture can be a fun challenge and a great way to get motivated and stay engaged.
Futuristic City
Combining real-life references with imagination helps to improve technical ability and, at the same time, grow your creative skills. An excellent idea for drawing is to draw a real city skyline, but then add your personal touches to show what you think the city might look like 50 or 100 years from now.
Your bedroom
If you are looking for drawing ideas for kids, try having them sketch their room and suggest they rearrange the setup and decor in drawings. Whether they decide to change their real living space or not, they will have fun and learn the value of looking at things from different perspectives.
Your Garage
Either clean and organized or messy and chaotic, garages can have interesting features and contents that can serve as drawing prompts for many pages in your sketchbook.
Waiting rooms
Few people like to spend a lot of time waiting. An excellent drawing prompt is to sketch the waiting room of a doctor’s office or administrative lobby the next time you anticipate a long wait.
This is when keeping a small sketchbook in your pocket or bag can help relieve stress or reduce frustration.
The Inside of your Desk Drawer
You can tell a lot about someone from their personal spaces. From the contents to how orderly things are kept, drawing your desk drawer can be a metaphorical self-portrait.
Literary Devices and Other Easy Drawing Ideas
To inject some fun into your artwork, try illustrating literary devices. Visual representations of old sayings or uses of language that are familiar can add some playfulness to your sketchbook.
Metaphor
A metaphor is saying 2 different things that have some similar characteristics are the same for comparison’s sake. “Life is a highway” is a metaphor that suggests some parts of life are similar to some parts of life even though they are obviously not one and the same.
Pun
A pun is a play on words that twists the arrangement or sounds of words to change the meaning or present 2 possible meanings for the phrase or saying. Think dad jokes!
What’s Next?
Whew, this was a big list! But it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the potential drawing ideas for sketching or finished artworks. The point is, you just need to start sketching today. Whether you draw a Christmas tree, a teddy bear, a game controller, or a jack-o-lantern, sketching becomes contagious.
Once you start drawing regularly, you can return to this list, or use these ideas to inspire your own! If you’re new to drawing and would like some help with how to get started, check out this article on drawing practice.
