96 Drawing ideas that get you into the groove.

• Your favorite robot.

• A t-shirt design you wish existed.

Is there a favorite pop culture or obscure reference you'd rock on a T-shirt?

• A genie.

• A jar of something that should never be jarred.

The contents of the jar could be surprising or harrowing (how jarring).

• Insects (real or invented).

Who knows? Maybe an interesting insect drawing could sit in your sandbox for the next logo you draw.

• A ticket to a show you wish you could go to.

• A vintage can of soda.

You can make a cool poster to feature your vintage can, too.

• A crazy hat.

• A haunted house.

• A time machine.

• Money (coins, bills, or both) from a nation you're the ruler of.

Would coins show your face? Would bills depict locations from your life?

• A self-portrait from your reflection in a spoon.

• The texture of wood grain.

• A labyrinth.

• As many things with wheels as you can think of.

Can you fill a page of things with wheels?

• Start with a scribble, then complete a drawing around it.

• A selfie self-portrait.

How much would a self-portrait of you change based on the angle, and your arm outstretched in the image?

• A towel in different positions (crumpled, hanging, folded).

• A typical cart of yours at the grocery store.

Is it normal to buy that many quarts of ice cream?

• Choose an object and draw its outline. Turn the object a little then draw the outline again. Repeat.

This practice can inspire some fresh ideas for logo concepts.

• Herbs (rosemary, dill, or whatever you like most).

If you’re not much of a cook, you can draw herbs you invent, too.

• A step-by-step drawing of how to cook something.

• A headline from the news.

Pick a headline from the news and draw out what it describes.

• The inside of your closet.

• A four-frame sequence of a cocoon opening (but it's not a butterfly that comes out).

• A mad scientist's lab.

Whether you first think of something Frankenstein-esque or a scene from Pinky and the Brain, a science lab is fun to draw.

• Actual party animals.

• Exercise poses.

The practice of drawing people in different poses can be helpful for future logo drawings. Healthcare, fitness, and wellness logos often depict people in abstract forms

• Different kinds of speech bubbles.

• A completed puzzle that forms a portrait of someone you know.

This broken-then-put-together-again effect can look extraordinary on a big poster.

• A piano.

The ivory and ebony contrast of piano keys doesn’t have to be shaded in graphite or charcoal. How could you portray a piano in a new, cartoon-worthy way?

• Your own set of new emojis.

Which facial expressions, objects, or animals do you think are lacking in the emoticon library?

• A scene from the last sports game you watched.

• You as a superhero.

Start with imagining what your superpower would be and go from there.

• Your week as a comic strip.

• People dancing.

Cute cartoons dancing like the Peanuts are great, but the last wedding you went to might also inspire some cartoon-worthy moves.

• Two things that don’t belong together combined in one scene.

• Drawn an idiom (a phrase that doesn’t make literal sense).

Examples of idioms are “bringing down the house” and “to grease someone’s palm.” These phrases aren’t literally what’s happening, but if they were literal, how would they look?

• A self-portrait of you twice your age.

• Your surroundings through augmented reality lenses.

If you haven’t worn a pair yourself, you can search online to see how it looks. You can still see your surroundings, but information is placed over that image by the lenses.

• The oldest belonging in your home.

• The perfect hotel room.

Don’t hold back — this would be the perfect hotel room according to you.

• A scene from a dream you had.

• Depict your favorite quote.

How could you represent your favorite quote?

• A scene from history.

• The view from your car’s rearview mirror.

• An optical illusion.

The options are endless. You could draw stairs that aren’t quite right, an apparent hole in your sketchbook, or twisted squares that make your eyes cross.

• A futuristic skyscraper.

• A schoolyard yearbook with woodland animal students.

This cute drawing idea is about animals, and baby animals at that. It’s hard to get much cuter.

• Hot air balloon.

Wouldn’t a logo with a retro hot air balloon look great?

• A pet portrait.

• A portrait drawn from an upside-down photo.

The way you see facial features will change with this simple twist.

• A tropical fish (real or imagined).

• A dinosaur (real or imagined).

• An underwater landscape.

This majestic scene could make an incredible backdrop to a poster.

• An X-ray of something on your desk.

• A museum display of 2020s artifacts in 2120.

• Your house if you lived in space.

• Your dream vacation spot.

Picture a poster-sized drawing of a city you love, or a scene as intimate as the beach you’d love to lounge on.

• The most delicious-looking birthday cake.

What makes the best cake so delicious? How can you depict that in a drawing?

• An old steam-powered locomotive.

Billowing steam has its own beauty along with an elaborate old locomotor train.

• Birds.

Some birds, like tropical toucans or hummingbirds, are especially aesthetic.

• Two animals combined to make your own mythical creature.

• Your perfect garden.

Whether you garden or not, what would your perfect garden be like? Flower drawing ideas are always an aesthetic choice.

• Ivy growing over something it doesn't normally grow on.

• An underground city.

There’s beauty in the fantastical, too.

• A close-up of a camera lens reflecting what it's capturing.

• A close-up of an eye.

• An alternate cover to your favorite book or album.

Think about what you love most about that book or album. Then depict it in a beautiful poster.

• Self-portraits from different perspectives (positioning a mirror at different angles).

• A photo redrawn with a vintage vibe.

• The view out of a window.

• Your own anime-style self-portrait.

• A Pokémon.

This anime drawing idea can be as simple as drawing a popular Pokémon or as fun as inventing your own.

• A bird’s-eye view of a scene from an anime show.

What would your favorite show look like from high above, instead of watching at eye level?

• Your own anime hairstyle.

• Close up of anime eyes.

One of the striking things about anime is the way that eyes are drawn.

• A staircase that leads to an anime universe.

• A “one of these is not like the other” set of anime portraits.

Draw the same anime portrait twice, but change several almost imperceivable details. See if someone you know can pick out which tiny things you changed.

• An anime outfit.

Draw an anime outfit you’ve seen and loved, or invent one you’d wear yourself.

• An anime show poster.

Envision a poster for an anime show. Include the main characters and a preview of the sort of action the show holds.

• Someone you know drawn as an anime character.

• Draw the air.

This idea is partly inspired by Monet, who spent most of his artistic life trying to depict the air. This is also a good exercise for anime drawings because of how vibrant anime universes are.

• Draw an object and give it an anime face.

• Letters with a new 3D effect.

Graffiti depicting words has a characteristic look to the big, chunky letters. Try to draw some graffiti letters but make them jump off the page with a 3D effect.

• A pattern you’ve never drawn before.

• Onomatopoeia words (like “bark,” “crash,” “whoosh”)

If you can represent these words, you’ll have an easy time representing something abstract in your next logo.

• Your own typeface.

• Someone on a skateboard.

• An ambigram.

An ambigram looks like a word, but you flip it on its head, and it’s still that same word... or as another altogether. These are complex glyphs that are worth taking a stab at.

• Aliens.

• The walls and texture of the underpass of a bridge.

• A monster.

• Invent new kinds of mushrooms.

Fantastical mushrooms get pretty colorful and wild. Don’t forget the toad sitting on top.

• A secret door that opens to a fantasy land.

• Something crawling up from the bottom edge of your paper.

magine that the bottom of your paper is the ground we stand on. What could be crawling up into our universe?