Drawing prompt wheel

What should I draw today?

Whatever the wheel says, for fifteen minutes. A blank page is intimidating because anything is possible; a prompt narrows it to one idea you can start on straight away. The prompts here are deliberately a little odd, like a bicycle for an elephant, because an unexpected pairing forces you to invent rather than copy a picture you have seen before.

If you want more, our list of drawing ideas sorts dozens of prompts by difficulty and theme, so you can paste in a set that suits you.

Using the wheel for a daily sketch habit

The hardest part of a daily drawing habit is deciding what to draw each day, and the wheel removes it. Tick Remove the winner after each spin and you have almost a month of prompts that never repeat. Many artists do month-long challenges, such as the ink drawing challenges that run every October, and a wheel of your own prompts is an easy way to set one up.

Keep each sketch short, ten to twenty minutes, and date the page. The aim is to turn up every day, not to make a masterpiece.

Add a second spin for a creative challenge

Once a prompt feels too easy, add a constraint from another wheel. Spin the colour wheel and draw only in that colour, or spin the animal wheel and make the animal the main character of your prompt. A robot gardener that is also a penguin is a much more interesting drawing.

Other constraints worth trying: draw with your other hand, use a single continuous line, or limit yourself to five minutes. You will need your own timer; the wheel only picks the idea.

Drawing prompts for kids and classrooms

Children love the silly prompts: a café for dogs, a giant snail race, a cloud that is a sheep. Let each child spin their own, or spin once for the whole class and compare how differently everyone imagined the same idea. Put the wheel in Full screen on the board so the prompt stays visible while they draw.

For younger artists, edit the list to simple subjects, one per line with Edit as text. When the drawings are done, the classroom name picker can choose who shows theirs first.

How do I make my own prompt wheel?

Write prompts that name a subject and a twist, such as “a fox” plus “in a raincoat”. Keep each under about thirty characters so it reads well on the slice; the result pop-up shows longer ones in full. Save your wheel with Share or embed and send it to an art group, so everyone draws the same prompt and shares the results. When you are simply bored rather than stuck for art, the what to do wheel has other ideas.