96 Drawing ideas that get you into the groove.

Remember why you love to draw with these varied and inspiring drawing ideas.

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Top drawing ideas to get you inspired.

Your pencil or stylus hovers over your desk, and nothing comes. It’s a blockage, or it’s boredom. On good days you fill sketchbooks and draw everywhere. In the margins of documents, on napkins, and even on your agenda. Images pop into your head and sometimes flow straight through your fingertips.

That inspiration isn’t constant, though. There are days when you scramble for easy drawing ideas because nothing else works. The following list of 96 drawing ideas goes from easy drawing ideas to niche ones. Get ready to envision wondrous and wild things with an array of inspiration at your fingertips.

Easy drawing ideas.

Simple drawing prompts spark creativity and jumpstart your sketching without the need to ponder your next subject. These simple prompts evoke mental pictures in an instant. Anyone who spent time looking under rocks as a kid can envision a dozen bugs to draw.

The real purpose of easy drawing ideas is to put your hands to work. What you draw at first might not make it into your sketchbook of favorites, but it will feel good to get momentum. After drawing something easy, you’ll be ready for whatever project comes next.

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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).

Vintage Bold Grunge Food Restaurant Store Promotion Soup Illustration Instagram Story

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Pencil drawing ideas.

Whether standard graphite or colored pencils are your pick, pencil drawing is a staple of artists, doodlers, and everyone in between. The smooth glide, the control over depth and darkness based on pressure we apply, and the power to erase and redraw are what make pencils so perfect for drawing, especially for logo concepting.

Now sharpen your pencils, because these pencil drawing ideas will stir visuals that you’ll want to capture instantly.

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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.

Cartoon drawing ideas.

Cartoons surged into popularity after the turn of the 1900s. Ever since, they’ve been the chosen drawing style for many forms of entertainment, from satirical posters to animated cartoons in children’s shows. Today, cartoons’ popularity means that many motifs are repeated.

If you’re looking for something new, start here. These cartoon drawing ideas below include some surreal images ideas and some funny ones, and they’re all the sort that only cartoons can pull off.

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

A mad scientist's lab.

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.

Cool drawing ideas.

There are some drawing prompts that you instantly visualize on a poster. Some are cool because of how abstract they are, and others are so detailed that you need to lean in to look at all the little intricacies. There are also cool drawing ideas that view common things in an uncommon way. These prompts can be helpful when drawing logo concepts because they make you think of unusual versions of universal ideas.

Cool drawing ideas prompt reflection, too. What would you look like if you were double your age? What is the oldest item in your home? Peruse these cool drawing ideas and the coolest one will instantly fill your head.

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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.

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Cute drawing ideas.

Cute drawings are fun to do, and they’re also fun to look at. Some of the best logos feature cute drawings that become instantly recognizable images of the brand they represent. Other cute drawings evoke such tenderness that they make it onto products like t-shirts, posters, and other consumer goods because of the simple pleasure of looking at them.

Drawing something cute isn’t always as easy as we’d like, though. Discover your next theme with this list of cute drawing ideas to get you started.

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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.

How to make the most of these drawing ideas.

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1. Find your favorite.
Choose your favorite idea from our list or pick a few if it's hard to decide.
2. Start exploring.
Open Adobe Express and start exploring. Go straight to templates if you know what you want to make. Otherwise simply browse for inspiration and start a new project.
3. Experiment and have fun.
Play with the color themes, fonts, graphics and images. Upload your own photos or use some of ours – the choice is yours.
4. Bring your drawing idea to life.
Add a personal touch to make the design your own. Try a photo filter or an image crop; add animation or a soundtrack – the possibilities are endless.
5. Save and share.
Download your files for printing or share to your socials directly from the app.

Aesthetic drawing ideas.

Aesthetics involve notions of beauty; and aesthetic drawings are those that depict beautiful things. A keen artist might say that anything can be drawn aesthetically if the right methods are applied. On a less technical level, though, there are some drawing prompts that bring out beauty easier than all others.

We like beautiful things — which is why we favor aesthetic drawing ideas in projects like logos and posters. These aesthetic drawing ideas point to some of the most beautiful, natural, manmade things in the world. Some of these aesthetic ideas borrow a little from fantasy, too.

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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.

Anime drawing ideas.

Anime is a style of animation from Japan. Anime cartoons and drawings are defined by color graphics that depict equally vibrant characters. Their environments, too, are action-filled, fantastic, or futuristic. Anime drawing ideas are the most fun for fans of anime shows, but a quick online search will yield enough inspiration for anyone. Anime drawings look phenomenal on posters because of their vibrance and fantastical themes.

Browse these anime drawing ideas and you’ll feel the flood of inspiration hit faster than you can get your pencil to the paper.

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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.

Graffiti drawing ideas.

If graffiti just means “wall drawings,” then caves have been graffiti canvases for thousands of years. In the modern era, what we consider graffiti appeared in the 1960s. Some sources say that Philadelphia was the city where it all began, later spreading to New York by 1970. Graffiti drawing ideas borrow from popular graffiti themes, which range from large and stylized words to optical illusions painted into walls around cities.

Take your pick of these graffiti drawing ideas for some creative inspiration.

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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.

When to put drawing ideas to work.

If you’re here looking for drawing ideas because you’re bored of drawing the same things, then picking the perfect drawing prompt is as easy as scrolling until something jumps out.

If you’re up against a creative block, however, and you’re looking for drawing ideas to push past it, this list serves two purposes. First, some of these ideas are so simple that they gain you slow but instant momentum. Once your mind is moving again, the next drawing will come easier.

This list also provides lots of drawing ideas that are perfect for brainstorming logo concepts, poster ideas, and more.

Exercise: pick and play with your medium.

Most of us already know which mediums we like to draw with. You might be a pencil person, or you might love colored markers. If you’re a graffiti fan, spray paint might be your utensil of choice.

If you love to draw but haven’t given each medium its fair shake yet, look at these drawing ideas and pick out which ones would be perfect for the mediums you haven’t mastered yet.

Then, put those new mediums to work.

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Adobe Express can help.

Adobe Express online editor has tons of free templates and quick and easy customization options to put your favorite drawing ideas to work. If you want to play with drawing ideas in logos, posters, or other creative projects, Adobe Express makes it as simple as picking a template and personalizing it, or making your own idea with easy-to-use tools. Whatever message you want to convey, Adobe Express brings it to life, no experience required.

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