Indonesia isn't a country you draw so much as a country you distribute. The five big islands each have strong personalities — Sumatra leans, Java slithers, Sulawesi throws a starfish tantrum — and the score lives or dies on whether you space them across an absurdly wide canvas like the real map does.
The shape at a glance
Indonesia is a vast scattered chain roughly three times wider than tall, straddling the equator between mainland Asia and Australia. Sumatra is a long diagonal bar in the west; Java is a thin horizontal sliver below it; Borneo (Kalimantan) is the big rounded mass in the center-north; Sulawesi is a strange K-shaped starfish east of Borneo; and Papua, the western half of New Guinea, is the huge bird-head shape at the far east. Thousands of smaller islands stitch the gaps.
Step by step
- Establish the frame: a very wide, shallow band across your canvas, about three times wider than tall, centered on the equator.
- Draw Sumatra in the west as a long narrow bar tilted from upper-left to lower-right, like a leaning cigar.
- Place Java directly below Sumatra's lower half as a thin horizontal sliver, noticeably slimmer and shorter than Sumatra.
- Put Borneo in the center-north as a big rounded lumpy mass — the largest single blob in the chain.
- Draw Sulawesi just east of Borneo as a K-shaped starfish: four long thin peninsulas radiating from a small center.
- Finish at the far east with Papua: a large bird-like shape with its head and beak pointing west toward the rest of the chain.
Mistakes that cost you points
- Cramming the islands close together when the real chain spans an oceanic width — spacing is the score.
- Drawing Sulawesi as a solid blob instead of four skinny radiating arms.
- Making Java as thick as Sumatra; Java is a sliver by comparison.
- Forgetting Papua entirely, which deletes nearly a quarter of the country's area at the far east.
Place it on the map
Indonesia fills the seas between mainland Southeast Asia and Australia, with Malaysia sharing Borneo's north side and Papua New Guinea taking the eastern half of New Guinea. Sumatra's northern tip sits right below Malaysia's peninsula, nearly closing the Strait of Malacca.
Pro tip: Place the two diagonal anchors first — Sumatra leaning one way in the west and Papua's bird-head in the east — and let Borneo, Java and Sulawesi fill the middle. If Sumatra and Papua are right, the IoU frame is right, and everything between them is bonus.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do you draw Indonesia from memory?
- Start with the overall box — is Indonesia wider than tall or the reverse — then place its signature feature first and build the rest of the outline around it. Finish with the coastline details, then compare against the real border in a free practice round to get a 0-100 score.
- How hard is it to draw Indonesia?
- Indonesia rates as hard difficulty. Seventeen thousand islands straddling the equator — even the five big ones are a serious test of arrangement.