Random Drawing Generator: Drawing Ideas

How to use it

1. Spin for an ideaPress SPIN, click the wheel or press Space. The result shows the prompt in full, even when the slice label is cut short.
2. Set a timeGive yourself five, fifteen or thirty minutes. A short limit stops you from overthinking the first line.
3. Spin twice for a harder oneCombine a subject with a challenge, such as a lighthouse in a storm drawn in one continuous line.

What is on this wheel

The seven groups

Animals, places, objects and people are drawn from ordinary life: a dog waiting at the door, an empty train station, a pair of worn-out shoes, someone carrying groceries. Most can be drawn from observation or from a photo you take yourself.

Fantasy and food are for imagination and color: a tree with a secret door, a map of an invented island, a bowl of ramen. The challenges group is different. It holds instructions such as draw it with your other hand or use only three colors, and it is meant to be spun together with a subject.

Ways to practice with a random prompt

A daily sketch habit works best when the choice takes no effort. Spin once, set a timer, draw, and stop when the timer ends. After a month you will have thirty drawings of things you would not have picked yourself.

For a study session, keep one group only. Objects are good for shading and perspective, people for gesture and proportion, places for composition. Paste the rows of one group from the table into the entry box and spin from that shorter wheel.

In a group, everyone draws the same prompt and compares the results afterwards. The differences are the fun part. Remove the winner in Options keeps a prompt from coming back in the same session.

Combining prompts

Two spins make a harder brief: a subject and a challenge, or a place and an animal. To do this on one wheel, spin once for the subject, then delete the other groups and spin again for the challenge. Or open the wheel in two tabs, one with subjects and one with challenges.

Add your own ideas as new lines, such as subjects from a class, a theme for a zine or words from a story you are writing. The list stays in this browser and in the wheel's link.

Time limits and materials

A prompt is only half of a practice session; the other half is a limit. Try one-minute, five-minute and twenty-minute versions of the same prompt and compare them. The short ones teach you to see the big shapes first; the long ones leave room for texture and light.

Any material works: pencil, pen, markers, a tablet. The challenge prompts are written so they work with all of them, such as using only three colors or drawing with shapes only. If a prompt asks for something you cannot see in front of you, draw it from memory first and look at a reference afterwards; the gap between the two is what you learn from.

A month of prompts

For a 30-day sketchbook challenge, switch on Remove the winner and spin once a day. A prompt that has come up leaves the wheel, so the month has no repeats, and the Results tab keeps the prompts in the order they came up. Save the wheel on this device so tomorrow's spin continues from the same list.

Groups that draw together can share one wheel link at the start of the month and spin together on a call, or let one person spin and post the prompt. Everyone then has the same subject, which makes the results easy to compare.

How the idea is picked

Each of the 70 prompts has the same chance. The winner is drawn with the browser's cryptographic random numbers before the wheel moves, and the spin only shows the result.