8 Beginner Drawing Ideas To Kickstart Your Art Habit

Art Tips

Nov 9

I’ve collected 8 simple, beginner friendly drawing ideas to help you overcome self-doubt and finally kickstart your art habit by removing the stress of what to draw - and even better you can sketch them in 30 minutes or less on your lunch break or after dinner.

Before I built an art habit I thought that to call myself an artist I needed to spend lots of time drawing everyday, have great technical skill and be really confident, but actually it’s a lot simpler than that.

Really you just need to give yourself permission to start from scratch and allow yourself to be a beginner so that you can enjoy drawing regularly, because getting started is the key and learning as you go is what truly matters.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to draw, these are just casual ideas for you to experiment and have fun with because the most important thing is that you’re excited to show up for yourself and your art time

If you need a bit of help you can always look up reference photos for these drawing ideas or I have step-by-step tutorials for most of them over on my Patreon where I’ve also shared the full hour and a half real-time drawing session of doing these prompts without talking so we can just sit and draw together.

So grab your art supplies of choice and some paper or a sketchbook, and let’s start drawing!

1. Rainbows

Rainbows are the perfect beginner art doodle because they are probably the easiest thing you could ever find to draw, they’re joyful, and they’re a great way to experiment with colour.

You really just need 3 or more curves together in different colours and you’ve got a rainbow! Even if you doubt yourself as an artist you can absolutely draw a beautiful rainbow.

It’s fun to try different colours together, and they don’t have to be next to each other in the colour wheel like a traditional rainbow, you can try totally unexpected colours and see what looks good to you.

You can also add some other weather elements like sunshine or clouds.

This is your sketchbook so use these drawing ideas as prompts but don’t feel like you need to stick to them, they’re just there for inspiration so feel free to go totally off-script and follow that inspiration wherever it takes you.

2. Flowers

I love drawing flowers, because they’re easy, there’s so much variety, and they’re colourful.

I’m going to be filling the page with them but don’t feel like you need to do the same. Just sitting and drawing one flower is still telling your brain that you’re someone who spends time on their art everyday - even if it’s just a doodle - and that’s really powerful when you’re trying to build a habit.

You can just enjoy drawing the same flower shape in different colours, or you can experiment with different shapes.

If you go to Google Images and search for something like ‘types of flower’, then it’ll show you lots of charts of different flower shapes that can be really helpful to reference.

I’ve never had a bad time drawing flowers, and it’s ok if they’re not very original! You don’t need to be innovative every time you draw.

3. Bugs

Bugs are great if you want to get into drawing some characters because they’re the easiest living thing to draw.

They’re made of easy shapes, they have simple faces, they don’t have arms or hands, and they’re cute.

Ladybugs, bees, snails and worms are probably my favourites to draw and they make for fun characters.

You can easily give them a bit of personality and story by giving them accessories or human clothes, even if it doesn’t make much sense that a snail would be wearing a scarf!

4. Leaves

When you’re in the mood for some mindless doodling, leaves are the way to go. They come in lots of shapes and sizes, but they’re flat shapes so that makes them super simple to draw.

Because they’re so simple they’re great for practising your line work or trying out different styles or mediums without having much at stake, and just like with the flowers you can Google different leaf shapes to get lots of great references to use.

You can choose the season with the colours you use - so using really warm, vibrant greens suggest spring, deeper greens suggest summer, and then oranges and yellows suggest autumn.

It’s nice to add a few flowers or berries in the mix too if you get tired of leaf shapes.

5. Animal faces

Faces might feel a bit daunting if you’re a beginner, but I think animal faces are a lot more forgiving than human faces, and if you’re not ready to tackle drawing whole bodies then this is a great place to start.

Some simple animal faces to draw are bears, bunnies, mice, cats and dogs. All of these animals have quite round faces, and then either a round nose or a ‘v’ shaped nose, and different shaped ears depending on the animal.

Really the ear shape is the most iconic feature for a lot of animals, so as long as you get that right then you can make the face a bit weird and still get away with it.

If you’re a member of my Patreon community then definitely check out my simple guide to drawing animal faces to help you out on this one.

6. Human faces

This one might feel a bit scary but try to remove any expectation that you’re going to draw a realistic human face, and enjoy experimenting with doodles of faces with different expressions because that can be really fun.

You can try drawing different round shapes on your page, and then building on features from there. Try different nose shapes, make their ears bigger or smaller, give them a cool hairstyle, or maybe a hat.

I kind of like to think of the different characters in the game Guess Who, and all of the defining features that they have like a big nose, or glasses, or curly hair.

You don’t need good technical drawing skills to enjoy drawing human characters and giving them lots of personality, and if you’re really not sure then you can always draw them on a scrap bit of paper so that there’s really no pressure.

And you don’t have to draw as many as I have if you don’t have the time, just draw one if that’s all you can manage today - it’s still valuable to spend any amount of time on your art.

7. Your favourite food

When you don’t want to come up with a new idea or design a character, just think about your favourite foods and draw them!

I personally quite like drawing biscuits and cakes, because that’s my favourite thing to eat, and they’re simple shapes to draw.

See if you can simplify it down to its most basic shapes and lines to keep things fun and simple, or you can do a full still life if you have the time.

8. Your favourite hobby

If you’re feeling adventurous then you can draw an activity that you love, or even just the tools you use to do it.

This is great if you love doing crafts because you can just doodle elements of your favourite things to make, or if you love baking then you can draw some stages of a recipe or the ingredients.

It’s just a simple way to come up with things to draw because you’re familiar with your hobbies so it doesn’t require any grand ideas, you can just use it as practice for drawing interesting shapes.

Admittedly, if you have a fiddly hobby like painting intricate model figurines or making things with lego then this might actually be a hard thing to draw and not so simple, so maybe just start with drawing an easy hobby!

For any of these prompts you can just spend whatever time you have available today doodling some shapes or linework, you don’t have to finish anything or make anything that’s perfect - you can always add to it tomorrow.

Focusing on drawing things that take less than half an hour is a great way to help build up an art habit that’s achievable when you’re busy, and if it’s achievable then you’re more likely to be consistent with it.

If you have more than half an hour available then even better, but try not to put too much pressure on spending loads of time making art every day to be able to call yourself an artist.

If you’re learning to draw then consider joining me on Patreon where I host an illustration club every month that you can use for inspiration and accountability! I also have lots of video art tutorials on art basics like colour palettes and composition, and step-by-step guides to teach you how to draw things that you can get instant access to.

Enjoy! 💖

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