• 122 ideas

Drawing Ideas for Teens

Deal three briefs, see how long to allow and which skill each stretches, then start with the first line the hint gives you.

Drawing Ideas for Teens

All 122
  1. A floor plan of your dream flat, drawn from above30 min. Proportion: A door is about one stride wide. Use that as your ruler for every room and every sofa.
  2. A title page for the sketchbook itself30 min. Lettering: Your name, the start date and a small drawing of whatever is on the desk. Add the end date later.
  3. One eye, close up, with the lashes last10 min. Shading: The white of the eye is never white. Shade it lightly, and darker under the top lid.

Next step More quick subjects for a short breakGenerate a character brief to design next

All 122 ideas

10 minutes 17

  • A barcode that turns into a city skyline 10 min. Design: Rule the bars first, thick and thin. Then let the tops climb into towers, aerials and a crane.
  • A crown, a halo and a pair of horns on three identical faces 5 min. Character design: Copy one neutral face three times. The accessory alone changes who the viewer thinks it is.
  • A cube of jelly, an ice cube and a sugar cube 10 min. Shading: One box, three materials: one glows and wobbles, one is clear with white edges, one is matt.
  • A face in profile in one go: forehead, nose, lips, chin 5 min. Faces: The lips and chin sit well back from the tip of the nose. Most people push them too far forward.
  • A keyring with five charms that sum you up 10 min. Design: One ring, five short chains. Keep each charm to a silhouette you could cut out of metal.
  • A landscape inside a circle the size of a jar lid 10 min. Composition: Trace something round. Three layers only: sky, one far shape, one near shape breaking the edge.
  • A tiny room inside a rectangle the size of a matchbox 10 min. Perspective: Draw a smaller rectangle inside for the back wall and join the corners. Add one door.
  • A word drawn so it looks like what it means 10 min. Lettering: Make 'melt' drip, 'tall' stretch and 'shy' hide behind its own first letter.
  • An app icon for an app that does not exist 10 min. Design: A rounded square, one symbol, no words. If it needs a label to make sense, simplify it.
  • Fire, water and smoke in three small boxes 10 min. Texture: Fire is pointed and rises, water curves and falls, smoke curls and fades. No outline on smoke.
  • Five hairstyles on the same head outline 10 min. Design: Draw the hairline first. Hair sits on top of the skull, so give it some height off the head.
  • The logo of a shop that sells only one odd thing 10 min. Design: A shop for left socks or second-hand clouds. One symbol and a name, in one colour.
  • The most boring moment of today as a three-panel comic 10 min. Storytelling: Set-up, pause, punchline. The middle panel where nothing happens is the funny one.
  • One eye, close up, with the lashes last 10 min. Shading: The white of the eye is never white. Shade it lightly, and darker under the top lid.
  • Your non-drawing hand making a peace sign 10 min. Hands: Two long fingers in a V, two folded under the thumb. The folded knuckles make a small staircase.
  • Your signature, redesigned until you like it 10 min. Lettering: Write it twenty times, fast. Circle the best capital and the best ending, then combine them.
  • Your thumbprint, five times life size 10 min. Pattern: Look closely: it is an arch, a loop or a whorl. Draw the centre first and let the ridges flow round it.

Design it 24

  • A book cover for the story of your life so far 30 min. Lettering: Title, author, one image. Cover the title with your thumb: the picture should still say something.
  • A cereal box for a cereal named after you 30 min. Lettering: Front panel only: a loud name, a mascot, a bowl shot and a starburst with a silly claim.
  • A character sheet: front, side and three-quarter view 60 min. Character design: Rule lines across the page for eyes, shoulders, waist and knees so all three views match.
  • A custom back for a deck of playing cards 40 min. Pattern: It should look the same either way up. Design one half, turn the page round and repeat it.
  • A drinks can for a flavour that does not exist 25 min. Shading: Draw the can as a cylinder, wrap the label round the curve, and leave one tall white highlight.
  • A film poster for an ordinary Tuesday 40 min. Composition: Make something dull look epic: low viewpoint, big sky, tiny figure, a tagline along the bottom.
  • A floor plan of your dream flat, drawn from above 30 min. Proportion: A door is about one stride wide. Use that as your ruler for every room and every sofa.
  • A hoodie graphic, front and back 30 min. Design: Small mark on the chest, large piece on the back. They should share one shape or one word.
  • A monogram logo from your initials 15 min. Design: Six thumbnails first: overlap the letters, share a stroke, or hide one letter inside the other.
  • A phone case you would actually buy 20 min. Pattern: Trace round your phone. Leave the camera hole blank and let the design work round it.
  • A room you would like to live in, seen from the doorway 60 min. Perspective: One vanishing point on the far wall. The floor, the ceiling and the bed edges all aim at it.
  • A sheet of nine stickers about your week 30 min. Design: Thick outline, white border, flat colour. Each one must make sense alone, cut out of the sheet.
  • A ticket and a wristband for a festival you invent 20 min. Lettering: Tickets are all hierarchy: name huge, date medium, small print tiny. Add a tear-off stub.
  • A tiny house on wheels with one wall cut away 45 min. Perspective: Draw the box first. Then fit in a bed, a desk and a kitchen without anything overlapping.
  • An album cover for a band that does not exist 30 min. Composition: Work in a square. It has to read at thumbnail size, so use one big shape and a short name.
  • An ambigram: a word that still reads when turned upside down 40 min. Lettering: Start with 'pod' or 'suns', where the letters already turn into each other. Then try a name.
  • The character select screen of a game you invent 45 min. Character design: Four characters, four silhouettes. Fill each in black first to check they read apart.
  • The first five letters of your own typeface 30 min. Lettering: Rule a top, middle and base line. Pick one rule, such as no curves at all, and never break it.
  • Home and away kits for a club you made up 30 min. Design: Draw one shirt outline and trace it. The away kit flips the colours; the crest stays the same.
  • Packaging that makes toothpaste look exciting 30 min. Design: Pick an audience first, such as gamers or gardeners, and let that choose the type and colours.
  • Six emoji that are missing from your keyboard 15 min. Faces: Same yellow circle, six expressions. The eyebrows and the mouth corners do nearly all the work.
  • Three skateboard decks that make one picture side by side 45 min. Composition: Draw the three long ovals first, then run one image across all of them, gaps included.
  • Your own sneaker, side view 30 min. Design: Trace the sole shape from a real shoe, then invent everything above it. Three colours at most.
  • Your playlist as a gig poster, with no real logos 45 min. Lettering: Biggest name at the top, the rest shrinking down the page. Invent the venue and the date.

About you 21

  • A crest for yourself, split into four quarters 30 min. Design: A shield, a cross through it, one symbol in each quarter, and a motto on a ribbon underneath.
  • A map of your town with only the places that matter to you 30 min. Composition: Ignore scale. Draw your places big, join them with the routes you walk, leave out the rest.
  • A redraw of something you drew years ago 40 min. Observation: Keep the idea and the pose, and change nothing but the drawing. Date both and keep them together.
  • A self-portrait as a playing card 45 min. Faces: Court cards are double-headed. Draw yourself to the waist, then again upside down underneath.
  • A self-portrait with no face: only things you own 40 min. Composition: Five objects a friend would recognise as yours. Arrange them like a museum display.
  • A song you love as one picture with no words 30 min. Composition: Decide if it is loud or quiet, then choose big dark shapes or small pale ones to match.
  • A timeline of every haircut you have had 20 min. Faces: Same head outline each time, so only the hair changes. Label each one with your age.
  • Everything in your bag, laid out in neat rows from above 30 min. Observation: Square everything to the page edges. From above a bottle is a circle and a book a rectangle.
  • The inside of your head as a house cut in half 40 min. Storytelling: Profile outline, then floors and rooms: a worry cupboard, a song on a loop, a snack department.
  • Six expressions of your own face, from a mirror 30 min. Faces: Draw the same head outline six times first. Watch your eyebrows: they move more than you think.
  • Today's mood as weather over a small landscape 15 min. Shading: Use the same hills every time. Only the sky changes, so a month of them becomes a diary.
  • The view from your bedroom window at night 35 min. Shading: Shade the whole page mid-grey, go darker for the sky, then rub out the lit windows.
  • You now and you at 30, standing side by side 40 min. Proportion: An average adult is about seven and a half heads tall. Measure your drawing in heads to check.
  • Your bedroom door from the outside, with everything stuck to it 25 min. Observation: A tall rectangle first. Then the stickers, signs and hooks as flat shapes, all squared to the door.
  • Your desk the night before a deadline 35 min. Observation: Do not tidy it first. The mug, the loose sheets and the snack wrappers are the story.
  • Your favourite meal from directly above, labelled 25 min. Observation: From above a plate is a true circle. Label the parts with thin ruled lines, like a diagram.
  • Your friend group as animals 30 min. Character design: Choose by personality, not looks. Keep one real detail each: the glasses, the cap, the bag.
  • Your hands holding your phone, as you see them now 25 min. Hands: The thumbs do the work and the fingers stack up behind the phone. Leave the screen blank.
  • Your pet, or the pet you want, in a formal portrait 30 min. Texture: Three-quarter view, serious face, a ruff or a uniform. Fur grows away from the nose.
  • Your school timetable as a comic, one panel a lesson 25 min. Storytelling: No words. One object per lesson says enough: a beaker, a ball, a verb table, a clock at 3.29.
  • Yourself in three styles: realistic, cartoon and a grid of squares 45 min. Faces: Decide which three features survive every version. Those are what make a face look like you.

Sketchbook page 20

  • A double page about one colour 30 min. Colour: Everything in the house that is, say, orange, drawn small and labelled. The page designs itself.
  • A hoodie thrown over a chair, drawn three times 40 min. Shading: Folds hang from the points that hold the cloth up. Find those two or three points first.
  • A page of birds from the window, twenty seconds each 20 min. Gesture: An egg for the body, a ball for the head, one line for the tail's angle. They will not wait.
  • A page of ears, the feature everyone avoids 25 min. Faces: The outer rim is a question mark with a Y shape inside it. Work from a photo of your own.
  • A page of eyes from four angles: front, three-quarter, profile, looking up 30 min. Faces: The eyeball is a ball. The lids wrap round it, so they curve more as the head turns.
  • A page of hair: straight, wavy, curly, coily, braided 35 min. Texture: Draw hair as big ribbons and shade between them. Single strands come last, and only a few.
  • A page of leaves from one plant, at every angle 25 min. Observation: The centre vein is the leaf's spine. Bend that line first and wrap the outline round it.
  • A page of thirty-second poses from a sports clip 15 min. Gesture: Pause, draw the line of the spine and the limbs, move on. No faces, no fingers, no rubbing out.
  • A page of twenty noses 30 min. Faces: A nose is a wedge with a ball on the end and two wings. Turn the wedge and the rest follows.
  • A page of your own hand doing six different jobs 40 min. Hands: Holding a mug, pointing, gripping a pen. Box the palm first; each finger is three cylinders.
  • A storyboard of your morning: six frames, six camera angles 25 min. Composition: Wide shot, close-up, over the shoulder, from the floor. Put faces on a third, not dead centre.
  • A swatch page for every pen you own 20 min. Colour: A labelled box per pen, then a row where each colour crosses the others to show how they layer.
  • A title page for the sketchbook itself 30 min. Lettering: Your name, the start date and a small drawing of whatever is on the desk. Add the end date later.
  • Boxes floating above and below a horizon line 25 min. Perspective: Above the line you see a box's underside, below it the top. On the line you see neither.
  • The lunch hall from one seat, people as simple shapes 20 min. Observation: People move, so draw the tables first and drop a figure in whenever someone holds still.
  • Nine textures in nine boxes 30 min. Texture: Fur, brick, knitwear, wet glass, bark, chrome. Fill each box to its edges, with no outlines.
  • One character, twelve expressions 35 min. Faces: A grid of heads. Push each one past polite: the annoyed one should look properly furious.
  • One object drawn ten times, simpler every time 30 min. Design: Start realistic and drop detail each round. The last should be an icon of five lines or fewer.
  • One of your shoes drawn from six angles 45 min. Proportion: Front, back, side, top, sole, three-quarter. The ankle hole is an ellipse that tilts each time.
  • One word lettered eight ways 30 min. Lettering: Serif, script, stencil, shadowed, stretched tall, squashed wide. Pick a short word.

Art class 24

  • A ballpoint pen taken apart, every piece laid out in order 30 min. Observation: Line the parts up along one axis, in the order they fit together: cap, barrel, spring, refill, tip.
  • A crushed drinks can 35 min. Shading: Every dent is a small flat plane. Pick a light side, then shade each plane by how far it turns away.
  • A face lit from below by a phone torch 50 min. Shading: Every shadow flips: dark above the cheeks, the nose and the brow. Squint and draw the two shapes first.
  • A forest where the far trees are pale and the near ones dark 30 min. Depth: Three rows of trunks. Distance lowers contrast and detail, so the back row is thin, grey and plain.
  • A heap of school bags in the corner of the room 50 min. Composition: Draw the heap as one big outline first. Then find each bag inside it, front ones first.
  • A knotted scarf or tie, drawn life size 35 min. Shading: Follow one edge of the cloth right through the knot. Shade wherever cloth passes under cloth.
  • A marble or a glass bead, five times life size 35 min. Shading: Light passes through the glass and pools as a bright patch inside the cast shadow. Leave it as paper.
  • A paper aeroplane sitting on the desk, shaded plane by plane 40 min. Shading: Fold one and set it by a window. It is all flat planes, so give each one a single even tone.
  • A piece of fruit drawn with hatching and no outline 30 min. Hatching: Closer lines read darker. Let the edge of the fruit be the place where the hatching stops.
  • A planning page for a final piece 45 min. Composition: Four thumbnails, two small studies, one colour test, and notes on what you would change next.
  • A school corridor in one-point perspective 45 min. Perspective: One dot at eye level. Lockers, floor tiles and ceiling lights all run to it; uprights stay upright.
  • A self-portrait from a mirror, measured properly 60 min. Faces: Hold your pencil at arm's length and measure where your eyes sit between crown and chin.
  • A shell, a pine cone or a bone from the science room 45 min. Texture: Find how the pattern repeats before you draw any of it. Shade the whole form as a simple lump first.
  • A shoe pointing straight at you, toe first 35 min. Foreshortening: What points at you loses length but keeps its width. The toe cap is huge; the heel barely shows.
  • A small photo of yourself enlarged with a grid 60 min. Proportion: Rule a grid on a copy of the photo and a bigger one on your page. Copy one square at a time.
  • A stapler opened out flat, every spring and hinge 40 min. Proportion: Draw the two long arms first, as a wide V from the hinge. The small parts sit inside that frame.
  • A sweet in a twisted wrapper, drawn the size of your hand 35 min. Shading: Cellophane is all sharp highlights and hard-edged darks, with the sweet's colour showing between them.
  • A tall building seen from the pavement 45 min. Perspective: Add a third vanishing point high above the page, so the uprights lean in towards each other.
  • An eye reflecting a scene 45 min. Shading: Draw the window or figure on the iris as a small curved shape, the brightest thing on the page.
  • Stools stacked on the art room tables, drawn by their gaps 30 min. Negative space: Shade the shapes of air between the legs and rungs. The stools appear without an outline.
  • Sunglasses reflecting the room 35 min. Shading: Each lens holds a small bent copy of the room. One bright window shape per lens is enough.
  • Three objects that tell a story without any words 50 min. Composition: A boarding pass, a dead plant, a spare key. Overlap them so the eye travels from one to the next.
  • Whatever a card viewfinder frames when you hold it up 30 min. Composition: Cut a window the shape of your page in scrap card. Draw only what it frames, edges included.
  • Your school's front entrance in two-point perspective 50 min. Perspective: Face one corner. It is a single upright line, and each wall runs off to its own dot on the horizon.

With friends 16

  • A group zine, one page each 60 min. Storytelling: Agree a theme and a page size. Black pen photocopies cleanly. Staple a copy for everyone.
  • A logo for your friend group 30 min. Design: Everyone sketches for ten minutes. Then take the best part of each sketch and combine them.
  • A sketchbook that moves to a new friend every week 30 min. Style: Each person fills one spread and may add one thing to the spread before theirs.
  • A T-shirt for a band that does not exist, put to a vote 30 min. Design: Agree the band name first. Everyone designs alone, then the table votes with one dot each.
  • Call an emotion and everyone draws their character feeling it 15 min. Faces: Ninety seconds a round. Compare how differently 'smug' comes out across the table.
  • Character trade 40 min. Character design: Each person designs a character, swaps sheets and redraws the other one in their own style.
  • Each other as cartoon characters, the flattering version 25 min. Faces: Ask which feature they like best and build the cartoon round that. Keep it kind.
  • Finish each other's abandoned drawings 30 min. Style: Everyone brings a sketch they gave up on. Swap, and finish it without asking what it was meant to be.
  • Five silhouettes, and friends guess each personality 25 min. Character design: Fill each character in solid black. If nobody can tell hero from villain, change the shapes.
  • Four-minute portraits, then everyone moves one seat along 20 min. Faces: Big shapes only: head, hair mass, shoulders. Sign it and give it to the sitter.
  • One simple character, redrawn by everyone their own way 30 min. Style: Someone sets the design. Keep the hair, outfit and colours; change how everything is drawn.
  • Pick three pens for the person on your left 30 min. Colour: They finish a drawing using only those. An odd palette forces choices you would never make.
  • The same object in three styles, one person per style 25 min. Style: Realistic, cartoon, and straight lines only. Swap styles and go again with a new object.
  • Sixty-second poses, taking turns as the model 15 min. Gesture: Spine line first, then each limb as a single stroke. Change the model every three poses.
  • Tiny portraits of each other, the size of a passport photo 15 min. Faces: Small forces you to simplify: hair shape, glasses, one line for the smile. Trade them to keep.
  • Yearbook awards you invent, with a portrait for each 40 min. Faces: Kind ones only: most likely to befriend a pigeon, best snack supplier. Letter them on ribbons.

How it works

These drawing ideas for teens are written as briefs, the way a client or an art teacher would set them. There are 122, aimed at ages 13 to 17. Each shows how long to allow, from 5 to 60 minutes, and the skill it stretches. Deal three, then pick a group for design work, sketchbook pages or something to draw with friends.

Read the full guide

A time and a skill on every idea

Each hint opens with the minutes, then the skill, then where to put the first line. A self-portrait as a playing card is 45 minutes of Faces: court cards are double-headed, so you draw yourself to the waist, then again upside down. Faces leads with 16 ideas, then Design with 15 and Shading with 14.

Briefs, not subjects

As art ideas for teens go, the Design it group is the core: 25 briefs with a client in mind, even if the client is you. An album cover for a band that does not exist has to read at thumbnail size. About you holds 21 self-portraits that mostly skip the face. Art class has 24 studies a teacher would recognise, such as A school corridor in one-point perspective.

  • Press three times; take the one that worries you slightly. The skill label says what you will practise, a better reason than liking the subject.
  • For A character sheet: front, side and three-quarter view, rule lines across the page first. Animators call this a model sheet; it keeps a character consistent.
  • A group zine, one page each works in black pen because it photocopies cleanly.

Questions and answers

What can a teenager draw in 10 minutes?

Choose the 10 minutes group for 17 ideas, such as A barcode that turns into a city skyline. The timer runs 10 minutes.

Are these suitable for middle schoolers and art class?

For the upper years, yes: these are pitched at 13 to 17. Nothing is violent or rude, and every poster, logo and kit is for a band, shop or club you invent. The Art class group covers perspective, negative space, foreshortening and hatching, and its 45 to 60 minute studies work as drawing projects. For sixth graders, tap Ages 10 to 12 on the drawing prompts for kids.

What can a group of friends draw together?

The With friends group has 16 ideas for two or more people. In Character trade, each person designs a character, swaps sheets and redraws the other one in their own style. For a bigger table, Four-minute portraits, then everyone moves one seat along ends with each portrait signed and given to its sitter.

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