Blank page staring you down? Same. Here are 50+ things to draw when you’re bored — sorted by mood, not skill level, because that’s how creativity actually works. Easy doodles, mindful art, weird challenges, and seasonal ideas from someone who’s been drawing for 20+ years and still gets stuck.
Here’s what nobody tells you about being an artist: you still get bored. You still sit down with your sketchbook, pencil in hand, ready to create something… and then absolutely nothing happens. Twenty-something years of making art, and I still have days where I open my sketchbook and just stare at it like it owes me money.
The worst part? The longer you stare, the harder it gets. That blank page starts to feel like a test you didn’t study for.
So I stopped waiting for inspiration and started keeping lists. Things to draw when bored. Things to draw when sad. Things to draw when I have five minutes before a meeting and my hands need something to do. And honestly? Having a list changes everything. You don’t need a brilliant idea. You just need an idea. Any idea. The rest takes care of itself once your pencil starts moving.
These are the ideas I come back to over and over. Some are easy enough for a total beginner. Some will challenge you. All of them have gotten me unstuck at least once.
What Should I Draw Today?
Quick answer? Whatever is sitting on the table in front of you. Seriously. A water glass, a crumpled napkin, your keys. It doesn’t matter. The best what to draw when bored answer is always the simplest one: draw what’s already there.
But if you want something more interesting than your car keys, I organized everything below by mood. Because let’s be real — sometimes you want something mindless, sometimes you want a challenge, and sometimes you just want to draw something that makes you smile.
And if you don’t feel like scrolling? Our free art prompt generator will just hand you a random idea. Tap a button, get a prompt. It’s got categories, skill levels, even a mindful art mode for when you need drawing to feel more like meditation than a task.
Easy Things to Draw When You’re Bored
No ideas? No problem. These don’t require thinking. No reference photos, no technique, no pressure. Just you and whatever pen is closest.
Hearts — Basic hearts, fancy hearts, hearts with little wings or arrows. Add patterns inside them, stack them in different sizes, make a whole page of them. This is one of those things that feels silly until you realize you’ve been happily doodling for twenty minutes.
Stars and moons — A crescent moon surrounded by different star shapes. Add some wispy clouds. This is my go-to when I’m on the phone and need to keep my hands busy.
Flowers from imagination — Not from a reference. Just draw whatever your hand thinks a flower looks like. They’ll probably look a little weird and that’s what makes them yours.
Rainbows — Classic arched rainbows, rainbows peeking out of clouds, double rainbows, tiny rainbows sitting in coffee mugs. Add whatever colors you want — there are no rules with imaginary rainbows.
Patterns and mandalas — Dot in the center. Build outward. Circles, petals, lines, whatever happens. I’ve started mandalas expecting to draw for five minutes and looked up an hour later completely calm.
Fruit — An apple, a pear, bananas, a bowl of oranges. Fruit is genuinely fun to draw because the shapes are so forgiving. Nobody’s going to tell you your lemon is wrong.
Simple food — A slice of pizza. A cupcake with too much frosting. A bowl of ramen. Food drawings are comforting in the same way cooking shows are comforting.
Clouds — Big dramatic ones, thin wispy ones, the dark kind before a storm. Use the side of your pencil to shade them and suddenly they look three-dimensional.
Leaves and branches — Pick up a leaf from outside or draw one from memory. Add veins. Stack a few together. This is basically nature journaling without the commitment.
Geometric shapes — Cubes, pyramids, spheres. Shade one side darker. These look impressive and they’re secretly just basic shapes with a shadow.
Things to Draw for Stress Relief
Honestly, drawing has gotten me through some of the hardest seasons of my life. Not because it fixed anything, but because it gave my hands something to do while my brain was spinning. And, when your hands are mindlessly busy, your brain can relax. While doing these kinds of exercises below, and entering a flow state, I have made room in my mind to allow some of the stressors in my life to quietly surface without the overwhelm or added energy. I have found that it opens a space for processing and eventually a bit of clarity. Here are a few of the exercises and ideas I reach for when I need to slow down.
Zentangle patterns — Tiny, repetitive patterns inside defined spaces. If you haven’t tried this, look it up. It’s basically meditation with a pen. I’ve done zentangles at doctor’s offices, in waiting rooms, while dealing with anxiety I couldn’t name.
Watercolor washes — Wet the paper, drop in some color, and just… watch it move. No plan. No goal. Just color and water doing their thing. This is the closest I get to not thinking at all.
Continuous line drawing — Pen goes down, pen doesn’t come up. Draw your coffee cup, a houseplant, your own face — all in one line. You can’t rush this. Your hand has to slow down, and your brain follows.
Nature journaling — Go outside. Sit down. Draw whatever’s in front of you. Sunlight and nature can do wonders and nature journaling facilitates an extra opportunity for presence, observation, and calm. A bird, a patch of clover, the way the light hits the fence. Date the page. I have years of these and they’re some of my most treasured pages.
Color mixing swatches — Forget drawing altogether. If you have watercolors or colored pencils, just play with color. Make swatches, blend weird combinations, fill a page with your favorite palette. Sometimes that’s enough.
Mark making — Just drag your tool across the paper. Scratchy lines, smooth arcs, crosshatching, stippling, big sweeping gestures. No subject, no plan. You’re just exploring what your hands and found objects can do together. I do this when I’m too wound up to focus on drawing a “thing.” For me, it’s the art equivalent of stretching before a run.
Drawing Challenges When You’re Bored of Easy Stuff
OK so maybe you’re not bored-bored. Maybe you’re bored because easy stuff isn’t doing it anymore. Your brain needs something to chew on. Try these.
Draw with your non-dominant hand — It’s humbling. It’s hilarious. And it genuinely helps you break out of your muscle-memory ruts. My left-hand drawings look like they were made by a very earnest five-year-old and I love them.
Draw with your eyes closed — Put pen to paper, close your eyes, and draw whatever comes to mind. You’ll peek eventually — everyone does — and what you find is always wilder than you expected. It forces you to feel the drawing instead of controlling it.
Reverse coloring — Make random blotches, splatters, or paint big messy shapes on the page first. Then go back in and fill the spaces between them with lines, patterns, or details. You’re basically giving yourself a coloring page that didn’t exist five minutes ago. It takes the terrifying blankness away immediately.
30-second gesture drawings — Timer on, reference photo up, GO. Capture the feeling of the pose, not the details. Do ten in a row. By the seventh one your lines will be looser than they’ve been in months.
Draw from memory — Stare at an object for one minute. Put it away. Draw it. You’ll realize how much you don’t actually notice about things you see every day.
One drawing, one full hour — Pick literally anything and spend sixty minutes on it. Shade every shadow. Draw every detail. See what happens when you refuse to rush.
Upside-down drawing — Turn a reference photo upside down and draw it that way. This sounds gimmicky but it actually works — it tricks your brain into seeing shapes instead of symbols, which is how you draw more accurately. Bonus challenge: draw normally for a few minutes, then flip your canvas upside down and keep going. Keep flipping back and forth. It’s disorienting and kind of magical — you’ll catch proportions you’d never notice otherwise.
Word pictures — Write a short word — like “LOVE” or “CAT” or your name — then use the lines of those letters as a starting point for a drawing. The L becomes a rooftop, the O becomes a sun, the V becomes mountains. It’s part visual puzzle, part creative warm-up.
Same subject, seven days straight — Draw one object every day for a week. A coffee mug, a particular tree, your cat. Watch how your perception shifts with repetition. Day seven looks nothing like day one.
Just-for-Fun Drawing Ideas
No skills required. No artistic purpose. Just drawing things because drawing things is fun and nobody can stop you.
Your dream house — Floor plan, garden, the works. Include the reading nook. Include the art studio. Include the room that’s just for the cats. Go big.
A map of your neighborhood — Try to draw it from memory. Where’s the coffee shop? Which street has that one tree you love? Get the proportions all wrong. It’s weirdly meditative to see how your brain remembers the places you walk through every day.
Your favorite fictional character — Draw them the way you see them in your head, not the way a movie designed them. Your version counts.
An outfit you wish you owned — Fashion illustration doesn’t need to be polished. Sketch the wardrobe you’d have if money and physics weren’t factors.
A four-panel comic of your day — Stick figures absolutely welcome. What happened today? Make it funny. Make it weird. Make it real.
A monster that’s not scary — Big soft eyes, tiny arms, maybe a flower crown. A monster who just wants a hug. I draw these when I’m having a hard day and they always make me feel better.
A tattoo you’d never get — Or one you’d love to get. The constraints of tattoo design — bold lines, limited detail, has to read at a distance — make for a really satisfying creative exercise. Even if you’d never actually sit in the chair, designing one is a whole afternoon of fun.
Illustrate a line from a song — Pick the lyric that lives in your head rent-free and draw what it looks like to you.
Seasonal Drawing Ideas
Sometimes the best prompt is whatever’s happening outside your window.
Spring — Cherry blossoms, rain boots, baby animals, umbrellas, butterflies, flower bouquets, birds on branches.
Summer — Sunsets, ice cream cones, beach towels, seashells, sunflowers, lemonade with too much ice.
Fall — Pumpkins, falling leaves, cozy mugs of cider, chunky sweaters, acorns, candlelight.
Winter — Snowflakes (try to make each one different), mittens, pine trees, fuzzy socks, hot chocolate with ridiculous amounts of marshmallows.
How to Get Past Art Block
Because the art block isn’t always about running out of ideas. Sometimes it’s about pressure. The drawing has to be good. It has to mean something. It has to justify the hour you carved out to make it. That kind of weight kills creativity faster than anything.
I know because I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize the pattern. Art block shows up when I start caring too much about the outcome. And the only reliable cure I’ve found is to lower the stakes until the pressure can’t find you.
What actually works for me:
Grab the worst paper you own. I’m talking printer paper. The back of a receipt. Anything that feels disposable. When the paper doesn’t matter, the pressure vanishes. I’ve made some of my favorite sketches on junk mail.
Switch your tools. If you always use pencils, pick up a pen. Always work small? Go big. Always realistic? Try abstract. The unfamiliar tool resets your expectations because you can’t hold yourself to the same standard.
Use a random prompt. This is literally why I built the Art Prompt Generator on this site. When my brain won’t decide, I let the generator decide for me. It takes the choosing out of the equation, and choosing is usually where I get stuck.
Set a five-minute timer. Tell yourself you only have to draw for five minutes. That’s it. When the timer goes off you can stop. But you won’t want to. You almost never want to.
Are These Drawing Ideas Generated by AI?
No. Every idea on this page comes from my own sketchbooks, my own teaching experience, and my own years of staring at blank pages and figuring out how to fill them. These are the things I actually draw. The reverse coloring trick? That’s how I warm up on bad brain days. The word pictures? I still do those regularly. The mark making? That’s what I reach for when even the easy stuff feels like too much.
The Art Prompt Generator on this site is also human-curated. AI can generate lists all day long. What it can’t do is sit with you in that moment when the page is blank and your throat is tight and tell you that it’s going to be fine. That part comes from doing the work for a very long time and meaning it when I say: just start.
Is Drawing Good for Mental Health?
Short answer: yes, and it’s not just me saying that. There’s real science behind it.
A 2016 study from Drexel University measured cortisol levels (that’s the stress hormone) before and after 45 minutes of art-making. The result? 75% of participants had significantly lower cortisol after drawing. And here’s the part I love: it didn’t matter whether they were experienced artists or total beginners. The stress reduction happened regardless of skill level.
A 2024 study in Translational Psychiatry (a Nature journal) found that people who regularly enter flow states — that feeling of being so absorbed in a task that everything else drops away — were significantly less likely to develop depression and anxiety disorders over time. Drawing is one of the most accessible ways to get into flow. You don’t need equipment, a gym membership, or good weather. Just a pen and something to put it on.
And in 2025, a meta-analysis in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing confirmed that visual art therapy — painting, drawing, sculpting — is an effective intervention for reducing anxiety in adults. Not as a replacement for professional help, but as a real, evidence-backed tool in your mental health toolkit.
I’ve known this in my bones for twenty years. It’s nice to see the research catching up.
My Favorite Supplies for Getting Unstuck
When boredom hits and I actually sit down to draw, these are the things I grab:
Sketchbooks and Journals
Wreck This Journal: Now in Color [AFFILIATE LINK] — The best anti-perfectionism tool I own. You’re supposed to mess it up. Paint over pages. Tear things out. It completely rewires your relationship with “ruining” a sketchbook, which is secretly what art block is about for a lot of us.
Compendium Softcover Journal [AFFILIATE LINK] — The cover says “We can begin by doing small things” and honestly that’s the whole philosophy right there. Beautiful paper. Simple design. Gets out of the way and lets you create.
Drawing Tools
Caran d’Ache Luminance 6901 Colored Pencils — These are the colored pencils I actually use. The pigment is unreal — rich, smooth, lightfast, and they layer like nothing else I’ve tried. They’re an investment, but if you’re serious about colored pencil work (or you just want your doodles to look like they belong in a gallery), these are it. I can’t go back to anything else.
Pentel Color Brush Pen — This is what I reach for when I want to practice mark making or my quirky brush lettering. The tip is an actual brush, not a felt tip pretending to be one, so you get real thick-to-thin variation depending on pressure. It’s refillable, which I love, and the ink is rich and dark. One of those tools that makes even a simple sketch feel more intentional.
Sakura Pigma Micron Pen Set — My go-to for line work, zentangle, and inking. Archival quality, waterproof, and they come in different tip sizes. I’ve been buying these for years and I don’t see that changing.
Embroidery Kit for Beginners — Not drawing, I know. But when I’m really stuck in a rut, switching to a completely different medium is sometimes the reset my brain needs. The repetitive motion is calming and you end up with something tangible, which feels satisfying.
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[PINTEREST IMAGE PLACEMENT: 1000x1500px pin-friendly image here]Frequently Asked Questions
What should I draw when I have zero ideas?
Whatever’s closest to you. Your coffee mug, your phone charger, the corner of the room where the wall meets the ceiling. The trick is starting before inspiration arrives, because inspiration almost always shows up after your pencil is already moving. You can also try our free art prompt generator for a random idea on demand.
What are the easiest things to draw when bored?
Hearts, stars, flowers, rainbows, and fruit are all great starting points. They’re simple shapes that look good even when they’re imperfect. Patterns and mandalas are also easy to start — you just build outward from a dot and let things get as complex or as simple as you want.
How do I get past art block?
Lower the stakes. Grab the cheapest paper you can find, give yourself permission to make something bad, and just start. Switch your tools, use a random prompt, or set a five-minute timer. Art block is almost always about pressure, and the fix is finding a way to remove it.
Is drawing actually good for mental health?
Research says yes. A Drexel University study found that 45 minutes of art-making lowered cortisol (the stress hormone) in 75% of participants, regardless of skill level. Drawing also puts you into a flow state, which research has linked to lower rates of depression and anxiety. It’s not a replacement for therapy, but as a daily practice, it’s one of the most accessible mental health tools out there.
What’s the difference between an art prompt and a drawing idea?
They’re basically the same thing. An “art prompt” usually has a creative constraint (“draw a landscape using only warm colors”). A “drawing idea” is more of a subject suggestion (“draw a sunset”). Either way, the purpose is the same: giving you a starting point when the blank page feels like too much.
Can drawing help with anxiety?
It helps me. Repetitive drawing — patterns, mandalas, zentangle — is especially good for this because the rhythm of it settles my nervous system. It gives my hands something to do and my mind a single point of focus. A 2025 meta-analysis confirmed that visual art therapy reduces anxiety symptoms in adults. It’s not a substitute for professional help, but as a daily practice, it’s been one of the most reliable tools in my self-care toolkit.
I’m a complete beginner. What should I draw first?
Something with simple shapes. A mug (it’s basically a cylinder), an apple (sphere), a book (rectangle). Focus on looking at the actual shape rather than what you think it should look like. And please don’t compare your day-one sketch to someone else’s year-ten painting. That comparison is a creativity killer.
References
Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016). Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants’ Responses Following Art Making. Art Therapy, 33(2), 74–80. PMC5004743
Ullén, F., et al. (2024). Can flow proneness be protective against mental and cardiovascular health problems? Translational Psychiatry, 14, 146. Nature
Huang, Y., et al. (2025). The Effects of Visual Art Therapy on Improving Anxiety Symptoms in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. Wiley
More Free Creative Tools
Art Prompt Generator — Over 1,000 human-curated drawing prompts with categories, skill levels, and a mindful art mode. Free, no signup, made by a real artist.
What to Write in a Card — Stuck on what to write in a greeting card? Our Card Message Helper has warm, thoughtful phrases for every occasion.
Free Printables — Affirmation cards, coloring pages, and creative wellness printables. All free.
Artisan Greeting Cards — Original watercolor art greeting cards for when you want to send something that feels real.
If something on this list got you drawing, I’d genuinely love to know about it. And if you’re still staring at that blank page? Go try the Art Prompt Generator. It was made for exactly this.
Happy creating.
— Eliza
