Random Drawing Generator

How to use the random drawing generator

1. Choose a Prompt type: Simple, Twist or Scene (see below for what each gives you).
2. Set the Difficulty — Quick sketch, Medium or Challenge — and, if you like, pick Themes: Nature, City, Fantasy, Everyday, Animals, Food and Vehicles. With no theme selected, every theme is in play.
3. Press Generate or the Space bar. The card shows your prompt with its type and difficulty, and the counter shows how many different prompts your settings can make.
4. Start the timer if you want a time limit: choose a length and press Start (or T).
5. Keep what you like. Copy the prompt, Share a link so friends get the same settings, or look back through History, which keeps the prompts of your last 50 presses on this device.

Prompt modes: simple, twist, scene

• Simple — one subject, such as “a sunflower” or “a bowl of ramen”. There are 302 subjects across the seven themes. Simple prompts suit observation practice, warm-ups and studies of a single form.
• Twist — a subject with one unexpected change: “an apple with legs”, “a dog playing fetch in thick fog”. At Challenge level there are over 24,000 combinations, so you won’t run out.
• Scene — a character, an action and a place: “a lighthouse keeper decorating a cake on a park bench”. With 60 of each, there are 216,000 possible scenes. Scenes are for composition and storytelling: think about where the viewer stands, what happens first, and what the character feels.

How prompts are picked

Each part of a prompt is drawn with your browser’s secure random number generator, so every prompt your settings allow is equally likely. With Don’t repeat on, Simple prompts work through every subject before any comes back, and twists and scenes skip the last 1,000 prompts you’ve had. Nothing is uploaded.

Difficulty and the sketch timer

Each difficulty includes the levels below it. Quick sketch uses 99 subjects made of simple shapes and 28 easy twists. Medium adds more detailed subjects for 221 in all, with 60 twists. Challenge opens up all 302 subjects and 80 twists, including ones that need perspective, texture or many parts. Difficulty and themes shape simple and twist prompts; scenes always mix the full set of characters, actions and places.

The timer runs 1, 5, 10, 20 or 30 minutes. One minute suits gesture drawing, five a quick sketch, and twenty or thirty a finished piece. It tells you when one minute is left and announces Time’s up at zero with a soft chime; switch off Chime at the end if you’d rather draw in silence. While the timer runs, the page asks your device to keep the screen on, so you can draw without touching it.

Ideas for your sketchbook

• Daily practice. One prompt a day, Don’t repeat on. Change the theme each week to stretch into subjects you’d normally avoid.
• Art-club challenges. Share a link so everyone gets the same settings, generate one prompt for the room, set the timer to 20 minutes, then put the drawings side by side.
• Warm-ups. Five Simple prompts at one minute each loosen up your hand before a longer piece.
• Drawing games with friends. One person generates a twist, draws it without any words, and the others guess — or everyone draws the same scene and votes for their favorite. For timed team rounds, use the pictionary-style word generator. (Pictionary is a trademark of its owner, and Unbiased Wheel is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.)
• A 30-day challenge. Set How many to 20, copy the list, and add ten more the following week.

Want to draw names instead?

“Drawing” also means choosing at random — names out of a hat, the order of speakers, who goes first. That’s a different job: the random name picker draws names fairly from your own list, and the Secret Santa generator draws gift-exchange pairs.

Looking for a single subject with more facts to work from? The random animal generator gives species with size and habitat, and the random object generator has an easy-to-draw filter for everyday things.