You’re staring at a blank white screen or a fresh page in a sketchbook. It’s intimidating. Honestly, that blinking cursor or that pristine paper can feel like a personal insult when your brain is totally fried. We’ve all been there. You want to be creative, but you can’t even decide what color socks to wear, let alone conceptualize a masterpiece. Finding stuff to draw when your bored shouldn't feel like a chore or a graded assignment. It should be a low-stakes way to get the ink flowing again.
I’ve spent years doodling in the margins of notebooks during long meetings and, more recently, filling digital canvases on my iPad while half-watching Netflix. What I’ve learned is that the "artistic block" isn't usually a lack of talent. It's an over-abundance of choices. You have the whole world to choose from, and that’s the problem. You need constraints. You need a spark.
Let’s get into the weird, the simple, and the actually-fun things that help break that paralysis.
The Anatomy of a Boredom Sketch
Why do we get stuck? Psychologists often point to "choice overload." When the options are infinite, our brains just sort of... shut down. To beat this, you need to lower the bar. Stop trying to draw a hyper-realistic portrait of your grandmother. Instead, look at the mundane junk on your desk.
I have a stapler. It’s old, it’s dusty, and it has a weird scratch on the side where I dropped it in 2019. That scratch is interesting. The way the light hits the metallic hinge is a challenge. Drawing your desk clutter is the ultimate antidote to boredom because it requires zero imagination but high observation.
Grab your pen. Don't use a pencil—the inability to erase forces you to commit to your "mistakes," which usually turn out to be the most stylish parts of the drawing anyway.
Stuff to Draw When Your Bored: The 5-Minute Brain Dump
Sometimes you just need to move your hand. Forget perspective. Forget shading.
- Your non-dominant hand. This is a classic exercise for a reason. Try to draw your left hand (if you're right-handed) using only your right hand, but don't look at the paper. It's called blind contour drawing. The result will look like a melted pile of sausages. It’s hilarious and immediately removes the pressure to be "good."
- The contents of your junk drawer. We all have one. The loose batteries, the mystery keys, the rubber bands. Lay them out. Draw the silhouette of each item overlapping the next.
- A single piece of popcorn. Seriously. The texture is wild. It’s all crags and soft curves. It’s a masterclass in organic shapes.
- Cacti in tiny, overly-decorated pots. You can’t mess up a cactus. It’s a green blob with spikes. Give the pots personality—checkered patterns, googly eyes, or intricate Victorian filigree.
Why Your Brain Craves Doodling
There’s actual science behind this. A study published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology found that people who doodled while listening to a boring phone call retained 29% more information than those who didn't. Doodling isn't "zoning out." It's actually a way to keep your brain "online" during periods of low stimulation.
When you’re looking for stuff to draw when your bored, you’re effectively self-medicating for a lack of dopamine. By completing a small sketch—even if it’s just a series of interlocking triangles—you get a tiny hit of accomplishment.
Mastering the Mundane Objects
Let’s talk about shoes.
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Shoes are incredibly hard to draw, which makes them perfect for killing time. Think about an old pair of Converse. The canvas is frayed. The laces are tangled. There’s a specific way the rubber toe cap curves. If you spend twenty minutes trying to capture the exact texture of a shoelace, you aren’t bored anymore. You’re focused.
Kitchen utensils are another goldmine. A whisk is a nightmare of overlapping wires. A cheese grater is a geometric challenge. If you want something easier, go for a bell pepper. Cut it in half. The seeds inside look like tiny alien landscapes.
Exploring Architecture Without Leaving the Couch
You don't need to go to Florence to draw cool buildings.
- Imaginary Floor Plans: Ever wondered what your dream treehouse would look like? Draw the top-down view. Include a room for a library, a slide that goes into a lake, and a specific spot for a pet raccoon.
- The House Across the Street: Look out the window. Don't draw the whole house. Just draw one window frame. Focus on the reflection in the glass or the way the curtains hang unevenly.
- Fantasy Map Making: Channel your inner Tolkien. Start with a coffee stain on a piece of paper. Use the edges of the stain to define the coastline of a new continent. Add mountains (triangles), forests (little clusters of broccoli-looking things), and names for cities like "The Crags of Despair" or "Boredom Bay."
The Surreal and the Strange
Sometimes the real world is just... dull. When that happens, you have to lean into the weird stuff.
I like to combine two things that don't belong together. An astronaut riding a giant seahorse? Sure. A toaster that spits out tiny ghosts instead of bread? Why not. This is where you can really play with stuff to draw when your bored.
Think about "The Exquisite Corpse" method used by Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí. While they usually did this in groups, you can do a solo version. Fold a piece of paper into thirds. Draw a head on the top third, fold it over so you can't see it (but leave the neck lines visible), draw a torso on the middle third, and then legs on the bottom. Unfold it to see what kind of monster you’ve created.
Character Design for People Who Can't Draw People
Faces are intimidating. Proportions are a headache.
Skip the anatomy lesson. Draw "Potato People." Give them spindly arms, giant boots, and very expressive eyebrows. The eyebrows do all the heavy lifting in character design anyway. One up, one down? Sarcastic. Both slanted inward? Angry. Both way up on the forehead? Surprised.
- A grumpy coffee mug. Give it a face and arms. It’s annoyed because the coffee is gone.
- Your pet as a Victorian general. If you have a cat, you know they already have the ego for it. Draw the ruffles, the medals, and the intense, judgmental stare.
- A cloud with a secret. What’s it hiding? A lightning bolt behind its back? A tiny umbrella?
Botanical Illustration (The Easy Way)
Plants are forgiving. If a leaf is a little wonky, nobody knows. It just looks "natural."
Go outside or look at a houseplant. Don't try to draw the whole thing at once. Pick one leaf. Follow the veins. Notice how the light makes some parts look almost white and others a deep, forest green. Succulents are particularly great for this because they are basically just a series of repetitive geometric shapes.
If you want to go abstract, try "Zentangle" inspired botanicals. Start with a central circle and grow "petals" out of it, but fill each petal with a different pattern—stripes, dots, scales, or tiny checkers.
Digital vs. Analog: Does it Matter?
Honestly? No.
If you're on a tablet, you have the advantage of layers. You can mess up a hundred times and just hit "undo." But there's something about the friction of a real pencil on paper that hits differently. The smell of the graphite, the way the paper tooth grabs the lead... it’s tactile. It grounds you.
If you’re feeling fancy, try using a ballpoint pen. They are underrated. You can get incredible shading just by varying the pressure. It’s the tool of the bored student and the office worker, making it the official medium of stuff to draw when your bored.
Challenging Your Perspective
Take an object—let's say a soda can—and place it at eye level. Draw it. Now, put it on the floor and look down on it. Draw it again. Now, hold it way above your head.
Each time, the shapes change. The circle of the top becomes an oval, then a flat line, then disappears entirely. This is how you actually learn to see, not just look. Boredom is often just a lack of attention. When you force yourself to see the geometry of a soda can from three different angles, the boredom evaporates.
Actionable Steps to Kill the Boredom
Stop scrolling. Put your phone face down.
- Set a Timer: Give yourself exactly six minutes. Tell yourself you have to fill the entire page with something before the timer goes off. The rush of the clock kills the inner critic.
- The "Squiggle" Game: Draw a random, messy squiggle on the page. Now, look at it until you see a shape. Is it a bird? A cloud? A very confused dog? Incorporate the squiggle into a finished drawing.
- Limit Your Tools: Pick one pen. Only one. No erasing. This removes the "perfectionism" trap.
- Change Your Environment: If you’re bored in your room, go to the kitchen. Draw the spices. If you're in the office, draw the coffee machine. A change of scenery provides new "visual data" for your brain to process.
Creating art isn't about being a professional. It's about the process of looking at the world and translating it through your own weird lens. Whether you're drawing a complex architectural sketch of a fictional city or just a bunch of circles that look like bubbles, you're engaging your brain in a way that scrolling through a feed never will.
The next time you feel that itch of restlessness, don't reach for the remote. Reach for the pen. Find the most boring thing in the room—a stapler, a sock, a half-eaten apple—and make it look like the most interesting thing in the world. That’s the real secret to finding stuff to draw when your bored. It’s not about the subject; it’s about the way you choose to see it.
Start with a circle. Add some eyes. See where it goes. You might be surprised at what’s lurking in your subconscious when you finally give it a chance to come out and play.
Next Steps for Your Creative Break:
- Identify three objects within arm's reach that have different textures (smooth, rough, shiny).
- Spend two minutes on each, focusing only on the "edges" where the object meets the background.
- Combine those three objects into one "impossible" invention on the back of your paper.