What to draw when you're bored — 40 prompts that go somewhere

· 4 min read

Most what to draw when bored lists fail for the same reason: they hand you a noun. "A cat." "A tree." "Your shoe." You draw the shoe, you look at the shoe, and you are bored again, now with a shoe.

The prompts below are sorted by how much energy you actually have, because that's the real variable. And each one has a finish condition — a point where you know you're done — because "draw a cat" has no ending and drawings without endings get abandoned.

If you have five minutes and no energy

These are single-pass. No pencil, no erasing, no plan.

  1. Your hand, but with one extra finger. Don't fix the proportions.
  2. The last thing you ate, from memory, without looking it up.
  3. A circle. Then make it a face that is having a worse day than you.
  4. Whatever is directly to your left, in one unbroken line.
  5. The same shape five times, each one slightly wronger.
  6. A door to somewhere you'd rather be. Just the door.
  7. Your mood as a weather symbol.
  8. A creature made of exactly three shapes.
  9. Two eyes, then decide what they belong to.
  10. The letter of your first initial, as an animal.

Finish condition: you lift the pen. That's it. These are warm-ups, not pieces.

If you have twenty minutes

Enough for a decision or two.

  1. An animal that lives somewhere it obviously shouldn't.
  2. Your pet as a boss in a video game.
  3. A plant that is clearly lying about being a plant.
  4. The inside of a machine that makes one very small, very specific thing.
  5. A monster whose entire personality is one bad habit.
  6. Two characters who have clearly just argued. Don't draw the argument.
  7. A hat so specific you could name the person who wears it.
  8. Something from your childhood, misremembered on purpose.
  9. A map of a place from a dream.
  10. Your least favourite chore, as a creature that causes it.
  11. A fish that has evolved for a job.
  12. The same character at 8, 30, and 80.
  13. An egg. Then what's coming out of it.
  14. A building that grew instead of being built.
  15. A creature with no legs that clearly gets around fine.

Finish condition: it has a name. If you can name it, it's a thing; if you can't, it's a doodle.

If you have an hour and actually want to make something

  1. Design a creature from a habitat, not a look — pick a place first (deep cave, salt flat, inside a clock) and let the body answer the place.
  2. Redraw a childhood drawing of yours as well as you can now. Keep the original composition.
  3. A full character sheet for one invented animal: front, side, one expression, one detail close-up.
  4. Your city as one single creature.
  5. An animal built entirely from objects on your desk.
  6. A pair — predator and prey — that clearly evolved against each other.
  7. The mascot for a shop that doesn't exist. Include the sign.
  8. Something you're afraid of, drawn small and slightly pathetic.
  9. A creature whose defence mechanism is embarrassing.
  10. One monster, three moods: neutral, delighted, unwell.

Finish condition: someone else could draw it again from your drawing. That's the real test of a design.

If you want the drawing to keep existing after you close the sketchbook

  1. Draw a creature you'd be willing to look after every day for six weeks.
  2. Draw the same creature asleep.
  3. Draw what it eats.
  4. Draw the thing it's scared of.
  5. Draw it again a month later, without looking at the first one.

This last group is a different exercise, and it's worth explaining why it works.

The reason "draw a cat" doesn't cure boredom

Boredom isn't a lack of activity. It's a lack of consequence. A drawing that ends the moment you finish it has no consequence — which is why the fortieth shoe is as boring as the first.

Everything on the last list has consequence built in, because it forces the drawing to persist past the moment of drawing. A creature you're going to draw again in a month is a creature you have to decide things about — how many eyes, which way the horns curve, what it looks like tired. Those decisions are what makes drawing interesting, and single prompts rarely force them.

You can get the same effect a few ways: keep a sketchbook where one character recurs, draw for someone who'll ask about it later, or use something that keeps the drawing going for you.

Where our own app fits

Ours, so treat this as a description rather than a recommendation. Inkmon is built on exactly the last list: you draw a monster — on paper, photographed, or on the canvas in the app — and it hatches as a creature that lives on your phone. You feed it, play with it, and tuck it in at night, and after about six weeks of daily care the art regenerates into a grown version of your original drawing.

The drawing stops being a finished object and becomes a thing with a schedule. It doesn't make anyone a better artist, and it isn't meant to. What it does is give the drawing somewhere to go.

If that's not what you want, prompt 27 — redrawing a childhood drawing as well as you can now — is the single most rewarding item on this list, and it costs nothing.

Further reading