30 Face Drawing Ideas for When You're Bored

The hard part of drawing isn't drawing. It's deciding what.

Which is a bigger problem than it sounds, because the deciding is where the giving-up happens. Nobody abandons a drawing halfway. They abandon it before the first stroke, standing in front of a blank thing with no idea what belongs on it, and then conclude they can't draw. So the list below isn't inspiration. It's a way to skip that step entirely: pick a number, draw the thing, don't negotiate with yourself about whether it's a good idea.

So: thirty prompts. Draw them where they'll be seen if you can. Tag walls make this better, because every hashtag on our open wall collects the faces filed under it, and you can go look at everyone else's version of the prompt you just did.

How to use a list like this

Pick by number rather than by preference. Scrolling for the one you like best is the same stalling wearing a different coat.

Give each prompt about two minutes. That's long enough to make decisions and short enough that you're not defending them afterwards. If one turns into something you genuinely care about, stay on it as long as you like — that's the good outcome, not a rule being broken.

And don't try to do all thirty. Three is a session.

Expressions (1–8)

Start here if you're starting anywhere. The face barely matters for these: move the eyebrows and the mouth and the rest of the drawing can stay lazy, because people read the emotion before they read anything else on the page.

• 1. The face you make when the alarm goes off.
• 2. Trying not to laugh at the worst possible moment.
• 3. Monday, 9:00 a.m. No other notes.
• 4. Pretending to pay attention on a video call.
• 5. Ice cream headache, mid-strike.
• 6. Reading a message that just says 'we need to talk'.
• 7. The smugness of finding money in an old jacket.
• 8. Weekend plans cancelled, and being secretly glad.

People (9–16)

Drawing someone real is a different job from drawing a face. You're not chasing a likeness. You're after the one or two things that make that person recognisable, which is nearly always hair, glasses, or a single feature they'd name themselves if you asked.

Do these from memory instead of from a photo. Memory has already thrown away everything that didn't matter, and that editing is the job you'd otherwise be doing by hand.

• 9. A self-portrait. Honest or flattering, your call. Tag it #selfportrait.
• 10. Your pet, promoted to human.
• 11. Whoever makes your coffee.
• 12. Your childhood hero, from memory only.
• 13. You at eighty, still drawing.
• 14. Your favourite teacher. Be kind, or don't.
• 15. Someone from the last song you played.
• 16. The neighbour you've only ever waved at.

Constraints (17–24)

Constraints are the fastest way to make a face interesting. They force decisions you'd never make on purpose.

The trick is holding the rule at the exact moment it starts making things worse, because that's where the results you couldn't have planned come from. Everyone's instinct at that point is to allow themselves one small exception. Don't.

• 17. Straight lines only. Build the face out of sticks.
• 18. Two colours, picked before you start.
• 19. One continuous line, pen never lifts. Tag it #oneline.
• 20. Circles only. Even the mouth.
• 21. Five strokes maximum.
• 22. Thickest brush only.
• 23. Thinnest brush only. Commit to the shaky detail.
• 24. Dots only. Tap the face into existence.

Moods (25–30)

Moods sit between the other two groups. There's no particular person to picture and no rule to obey, just a feeling you have to find a face for, which makes these the closest this list gets to drawing from nothing.

They're also the ones most worth doing twice, a week apart. You'll draw a different face.

• 25. Heatwave face. Melting is allowed.
• 26. Friday, 6:01 p.m.
• 27. Exam week survivor.
• 28. Payday grin.
• 29. Rainy day, hood up.
• 30. Your 'this year, for real' resolution face.

Where these came from

Most of them are things people had already drawn on the open wall, which is a better source than anything I'd have come up with at a desk.

That's also why they lean towards ordinary moments rather than dramatic ones. Nobody sits down to draw triumph. They draw the face they made when the alarm went off, and that one turns out to be universal in a way the grand emotions aren't.

If you invent a better prompt than any of these, draw it and tag it. That's how the next thirty get written.

When a prompt refuses to work

Some of them won't land, and it's usually not the prompt's fault.

The common cause is that you've pictured a finished drawing before making a single stroke, and now every line is failing to match it. The way out is to start with the part you're sure about — the hair shape, the mouth, whatever arrived first — and let the rest of the face arrange itself around that. A face assembled outward from one confident feature nearly always works. A face traced from an image in your head nearly always doesn't.

Failing that, move to the next number. There are twenty-nine others and none of them mind.

Turning a list into a habit

Thirty prompts last about a week and a half at three a session, and then you're back where you started, which is the actual problem this list doesn't solve.

What does work is attaching the drawing to something that already happens. One face while the kettle boils. One on the train. The drawing isn't the habit — opening the thing is, and a prompt just removes the last excuse not to.

The hashtags turned out to help here in a way I didn't plan for. Filing your attempt under #oneline means that in a month you can open that tag and find your own drawings sitting between strangers', in order, which is a more honest progress report than a folder on a laptop is ever going to give you.

If you did these on paper, photograph the good ones or don't. Nobody's checking.

If you drew them on the wall, tap one to watch it replay stroke by stroke, and tap a hashtag to wander. Thirty strangers all drawing 'Monday 9 a.m.' turns into something worth scrolling.