Israel is one of the few countries you can draw convincingly in ten seconds: a thin coastal strip that sharpens into an arrowhead. The catch is proportion — players habitually make it far too wide, and suddenly the arrow becomes a doorstop.
The shape at a glance
Israel is very tall and extremely thin, roughly five times taller than wide at its broadest. The north is the widest part, around Galilee; the middle is a skinny Mediterranean strip; and the entire bottom half is the Negev, a clean inverted triangle tapering to a sharp point at Eilat on the Red Sea. The Dead Sea dents the eastern edge partway down.
Step by step
- Start with a tall, narrow rectangle — five units tall for every one unit wide — hugging the left (Mediterranean) side.
- Widen the top quarter slightly for Galilee, with a small eastward bump for the Sea of Galilee area.
- Draw the west edge as one long, nearly straight Mediterranean coastline from Lebanon down to Gaza.
- From the middle, taper everything below into a triangle: two long straight edges converging downward.
- End the triangle in a sharp point at the bottom — Eilat, touching the tip of the Gulf of Aqaba.
- Add a shallow inward dent on the eastern edge above the triangle, marking the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley.
Mistakes that cost you points
- Drawing it too wide — the real country is a sliver, and bulk kills the silhouette.
- Blunting the Negev's point instead of bringing it to a sharp tip at Eilat.
- Forgetting that the Negev triangle is about half the country's total height.
- Curving the Mediterranean coast when it is one of the straighter shorelines in the region.
Place it on the map
Israel sits on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, squeezed between Lebanon above, Syria and Jordan along its eastern side, and Egypt's Sinai at the bottom-left. Find the southeast corner of the Mediterranean and it is the thin strip running south from it.
Pro tip: Split your mental canvas: rectangle on top, triangle on bottom, and make the seam sit at the halfway mark. Players who nail that 50/50 split pick up almost the entire IoU area for free.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do you draw Israel from memory?
- Start with the overall box — is Israel 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 Israel?
- Israel rates as easy difficulty. The narrow strip with a pointed triangle at the bottom is simple and distinctive, though the waist and borders are fiddly.