New Zealand gets called an upside-down boot so often that players draw Italy and flip it — which is wrong in instructive ways. The North Island is a lumpy dog's head with a hook, the South Island is a long straight-backed slab, and the strait between them is wider than anyone expects.
The shape at a glance
New Zealand is a long narrow pair of islands running from northeast to southwest, about three times longer than wide in total. The North Island is the irregular one: a broad eastern lobe, a hooked peninsula curling down at its bottom, and a long thin arm reaching up toward the northwest. The South Island is bigger, longer and much straighter — a tilted slab with a jagged southwestern corner where the fiords cut in. Stewart Island is a small triangle hanging off the very bottom.
Step by step
- Set the axis: a long diagonal running from upper-right down to lower-left, spanning most of your canvas height.
- Draw the South Island first as a long tilted slab — bigger of the two — with one remarkably straight edge on its western side.
- Roughen the South Island's bottom-left corner into jagged teeth: the fiord country, the most battered coastline in the country.
- Above and slightly right, draw the North Island as a compact lumpy mass with a broad bulge on its eastern side.
- Add the North Island's hook: a downward-curling peninsula at its bottom, and a long thin arm reaching up and to the northwest from its top.
- Leave a clear gap — Cook Strait — between the hook and the South Island's top, then hang tiny Stewart Island off the South Island's bottom tip.
Mistakes that cost you points
- Gluing the two islands together when Cook Strait leaves clear water between them.
- Making the North Island bigger than the South — the South Island is the larger landmass.
- Drawing both islands vertical when the whole country leans from northeast to southwest.
- Forgetting Stewart Island at the very bottom.
Place it on the map
New Zealand lies alone in the southwest Pacific, far southeast of Australia — the nearest continent, across the Tasman Sea to the northwest. Nothing else is close, which makes the two islands' relationship to each other the whole geography.
Pro tip: The South Island's straight west coast is your ruler: draw that one confident diagonal first and align everything else to it. The North Island then sits to the northeast of its top end, and Stewart Island drops straight off its bottom.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do you draw New Zealand from memory?
- Start with the overall box — is New Zealand 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 New Zealand?
- New Zealand rates as medium difficulty. Two islands with clear personalities, but the tilt, the gap between them and little Stewart Island are easy to botch.