Africa · Western Africa
How to draw Cape Verde from memory
Cape Verde is not one shape but 8 — an archipelago. Draw the largest landmass first and treat the rest as satellites, because a handful of missed islets costs far less than getting the main island wrong. It ranks among the hardest countries to draw: the border carries far more detail than a freehand stroke can capture, so anything above 50 is a strong result.
- Difficulty
- hard
- Population
- 550 k
- Code
- CPV
Draw Cape Verde
Practice · draw from memory
Cape Verde
A four-step strategy for Cape Verde
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Cape Verde is close to square overall, so a lopsided sketch loses points fast.
- 02
Anchor one unmistakable feature — the straightest border section or the sharpest cape — and draw outward from it in a single continuous stroke.
- 03
Finish the main landmass completely, then add the remaining 7 pieces as separate strokes. Scoring counts total covered area, so an unclosed island can hurt more than a missing one.
- 04
Submit, read the nine-sector grid, and redraw immediately. The sector readout names the region you under-drew, and a second attempt typically gains 10–20 points.
Top scores for Cape Verde
Nobody has submitted a score for Cape Verde yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Africa
- Subregion
- Western Africa
- Outline pieces
- 8
- Detail score
- 12.78
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Cape Verde
Each one is measured off the outline the game scores, not copied from a reference atlas: the proportions, the straight sections and the way the shape breaks into pieces are all properties of the coordinates your stroke gets compared against.
74% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 8 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 26% of the area. Sketched without the rest, the shape is short by that much even when the mainland is perfect — place the outlying piece first, then draw the mainland around it.
The north edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 14% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the north. Rivers and capes do not do that; a border was drawn on a map. Straighten it deliberately — a wobbly line there throws the whole bounding box.
It narrows sharply toward the north
The outline is 4.2× wider at the bottom of the shape than at the top, so the broad part belongs in the south. Most failed sketches here put the wide section at the wrong end.
Answer key: the real shape of Cape Verde
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 409 units
- Width to height
- 1.08 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 8
- Longest straight run
- 14% of the perimeter, along the north
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.15× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Cape Verde at least once. Seeing the shape first replaces the recall the score is meant to measure with tracing, and tracing always scores higher than remembering.
Why Cape Verde is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Cape Verde. It scales and centres both your stroke and the real border into the same box, fills them, and measures how much of the two shapes overlap relative to their combined area. That means you are never punished for drawing Cape Verde small, off to one side, or rotated slightly — only for getting the shape itself wrong. The nine-sector grid then splits the real border into a 3×3 mesh and reports coverage per cell, which is how it can tell you that you lost the whole coastline rather than just handing you a number.
Cape Verde by the numbers
Cape Verde covers 4,033 km², which makes it the 164th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 51st largest in Africa. The capital is Praia at about 16°N, 24°W, and it sits in Western Africa. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.
Next to Cape Verde: regional peers
Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing countries of the same region side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.
| Country | Area | Population | Capital | Pieces | vs Cape Verde |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cape Verdethis page | 4,033 km² | 550 k | Praia | 8 | — |
 Benin | 112,622 km² | 11.8 m | Porto-Novo | 1 | 28× |
 Burkina Faso | 272,967 km² | 20.3 m | Ouagadougou | 1 | 68× |
 Ghana | 238,533 km² | 30.4 m | Accra | 1 | 59× |
 Guinea | 245,857 km² | 12.8 m | Conakry | 1 | 61× |
 Guinea-Bissau | 36,125 km² | 1.9 m | Bissau | 1 | 8.96× |
 Ivory Coast | 322,463 km² | 25.7 m | Yamoussoukro | 1 | 80× |
 Liberia | 111,369 km² | 4.9 m | Monrovia | 1 | 28× |
 Mali | 1,240,192 km² | 19.7 m | Bamako | 1 | 308× |
Draw these next
Countries near Cape Verde share border conventions and coastline styles, which makes them the most useful follow-up practice.
Working through one country at a time is slow. Take the blank map of africa and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Cape Verde drawing questions
How big is Cape Verde?
Cape Verde covers 4,033 km², ranking 164th of 190 countries here by land area and 51st in Africa. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 63.5 km on a side.
What is the capital of Cape Verde?
The capital is Praia at about 16°N, 24°W. The game scores the shape of the border rather than the position of any city, so the capital and its coordinates are here to help you place Cape Verde on a blank map.
Is Cape Verde hard to draw?
It is rated hard, and carries more outline detail than 95% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 8 landmasses, with about 14% of the perimeter running dead straight along the north.
Does Cape Verde border any country?
Cape Verde has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as hard.