You're staring at the paper. It’s too white. Too bright. It’s honestly a little bit aggressive. You want to create something, but every time you pick up the pencil, your brain decides to go on a sudden, unannounced vacation. It happens to everyone, from professional concept artists at Pixar to people just doodling on a napkin while waiting for their coffee. Finding cool things to draw isn't actually about having a "great idea"—it’s about finding a spark that doesn't feel like a chore.
The mistake most people make is trying to draw something perfect. Forget that. Perfection is the fastest way to kill a hobby.
Instead, think about textures. Think about the way a crumpled soda can looks or how light hits a glass of water. There is a specific kind of magic in drawing the mundane stuff that we usually ignore. When you stop looking for "masterpiece" subjects and start looking for "interesting shapes," the block usually clears up pretty fast.
Why Your Brain Stops Thinking of Cool Things to Draw
Artist’s block is basically just your internal critic being a jerk. You want to draw something "cool," but your brain defines "cool" as "flawless."
Science backs this up. High expectations can lead to a phenomenon called "creative inhibition." According to researchers like Dr. Alice Flaherty, a neurologist who specializes in creativity, the struggle often lies in the frontal lobe's relationship with the temporal lobe. When you're too focused on the result, you choke. To get around this, you have to trick yourself into just moving your hand.
Try drawing with your non-dominant hand for five minutes. It’ll look like garbage. That’s the point. Once you accept that it’s going to look messy, the pressure vanishes. Now, let’s get into the actual stuff you can put on the page.
Everyday Objects with Weird Textures
Look at your shoes. No, seriously. Sneakers are some of the most complex and rewarding subjects because they combine different materials—rubber, mesh, leather, and those annoying little fibers in the laces.
Draw a beat-up pair of Converse. Focus on the creases in the canvas. Those little lines tell a story about where you’ve walked. If you want something more mechanical, find a clear lightbulb. The filament inside is a tiny, delicate sculpture. Mapping out how the glass reflects the room around you is a classic exercise used in foundational art classes at places like the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). It teaches you about "negative space"—the shapes between the objects.
What about food? An avocado with its pit still inside is a masterclass in texture. You have the bumpy, alligator-skin exterior and the buttery, smooth interior. It’s a contrast dream.
The Physics of Liquid
Water is hard. It’s also one of the most cool things to draw because it forces you to stop drawing "things" and start drawing "light."
Fill a glass halfway. Drop an ice cube in it. Now, try to capture the distortion. See how the straw looks like it’s broken where it hits the water line? That’s refraction. If you can draw a glass of water that actually looks wet, you’ve leveled up significantly.
Anatomy Without the Boredom
Everyone says "draw hands" to get better. Honestly, hands are frustrating. They’re basically just meat-hinges that never want to look right on paper.
If you’re bored of hands, draw eyes—but not just the "pretty" eyes you see on Instagram. Draw an eye that’s squinting. Draw an eye with heavy bags under it. Focus on the wetness of the tear duct.
Pro Tip: Look at the work of Stephen Bauman. He’s an incredible contemporary realist who breaks down human features into structural planes. Instead of drawing a "nose," he draws the shadows that represent the bridge, the tip, and the nostrils. It’s a shift in perspective.
- Draw a hand holding a specific object, like a crumpled piece of paper or a heavy rock. This gives the hand "purpose" and makes the anatomy easier to map out.
- Sketch your own ear using a mirror. Ears are weird, cartilaginous mazes. They make no sense until you actually try to shade them.
- Focus on hair textures. Don't draw every strand. Draw the "clumps" and then add the flyaways at the very end.
Nature is Literally Everywhere
If you can get outside, find a tree with peeling bark. Birch trees are incredible for this. The way the bark curls away from the trunk creates these deep, dark shadows and papery highlights.
Plants are the ultimate "cheat code" for drawing. If you mess up a leaf, nobody knows. There are millions of leaves in the world, and none of them are perfect. Succulents, specifically Echeveria, have a mathematical spiral pattern called the Fibonacci sequence. It’s satisfying to draw because it has an inherent logic to it. You start from the center and build outwards, petal by petal.
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Surrealism and the "What If" Game
Sometimes reality is boring. When you want cool things to draw that don't exist, start combining two things that have no business being together.
- An astronaut riding a giant koi fish through a forest.
- A Victorian-style teapot that’s actually a house for a very tiny, very wealthy mouse.
- A skull with flowers growing out of the eye sockets (a bit cliché, sure, but a classic for a reason).
Think about "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dalí. He took something rigid—a pocket watch—and made it soft. Try that. Take a hard object, like a hammer or a brick, and draw it as if it were made of silk or melting wax.
Architectural Snaps
You don't need to be an architect to draw buildings. Find a photo of a local dive bar or an old Victorian house with too many gables.
The trick here is perspective. If you’ve never tried two-point perspective, it’s a game-changer. You pick two dots on a horizon line and pull all your lines toward them. Suddenly, your flat boxes look like actual buildings. It feels like a magic trick the first time you get it right.
Character Design and the "Silhouette" Test
If you're into character art, stop starting with the face. Start with the silhouette. A truly "cool" character design should be recognizable even if the whole drawing is filled in with solid black. Think of Mickey Mouse or Batman.
Try this: Scribble a random, messy shape on the page. Use a marker or a big chunky brush. Now, look at that blob and try to find a character inside it. Maybe that bump is a backpack. Maybe that long streak is a cape. This is a technique called "iteration" used by concept artists at studios like Blizzard. It forces your brain to see patterns where there aren't any.
Technical Skills to Practice
Drawing isn't just about the "what," it's about the "how." If you're stuck, stop trying to draw an object and just practice a technique.
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- Cross-hatching: Building up value with overlapping lines.
- Stippling: Creating an entire image out of dots. It’s tedious, but the texture is unmatched.
- Contour drawing: Drawing an object without ever lifting your pencil from the paper. It’s great for hand-eye coordination.
Addressing the "I Can't Draw" Myth
Most people think drawing is a gift you're born with. It’s not. It’s a motor skill, like typing or riding a bike.
The "I can't draw" feeling usually comes from a disconnect between what your eye sees and what your hand does. You know what a cat looks like, but your hand draws a potato with whiskers. That gap only closes with mileage. You have to draw a thousand bad cats to get to the one good one.
Kim Jung Gi, the late, legendary South Korean artist, was famous for drawing massive, complex scenes entirely from memory. He didn't do that because he was a wizard; he did it because he spent decades observing the world and "filing" those shapes away in his brain. He once said that he studied the world around him constantly, even when he wasn't holding a pen.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Sketch
Instead of waiting for inspiration to hit like a lightning bolt, use a system. Inspiration is unreliable. Systems work.
Start a "Bad Drawing" Journal. Buy the cheapest sketchbook you can find. Tell yourself that everything in this book must be ugly. This removes the "preciousness" of the paper. Use a ballpoint pen so you can't erase. If you make a mistake, you have to work with it.
Use a Random Prompt Generator. There are tons of these online, or you can make your own. Write 10 nouns and 10 adjectives on scraps of paper. Mix them up. If you pull "Melancholy" and "Toaster," you have a project.
Limit Your Time. Set a timer for 60 seconds. Try to draw your TV remote. Then do it again in 30 seconds. Then 10. This forces you to capture the "essence" of the object rather than getting bogged down in the tiny details that don't matter.
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The "Zentangle" Approach. If you really can't think of an object, just draw a big circle and fill it with repetitive patterns. Triangles, scales, waves, dots. It’s meditative. It keeps the hand moving.
Reference is Not Cheating. Professional artists use references. All of them. Use Pinterest, Unsplash, or just take a photo with your phone. Drawing from a photo helps you understand how 3D objects translate to a 2D plane. Just don't trace—study the shapes.
At the end of the day, the only way to find cool things to draw is to keep looking. The world is full of weird shadows, interesting faces, and strange machines. Your job isn't to invent something from nothing; it's to take what's already there and put your own spin on it. Grab your pen. Stop thinking. Start marking.