Asia · Western Asia
How to draw Cyprus from memory
Cyprus is dramatically wider than it is tall, and that ratio is where most attempts fail. People instinctively draw it too square, which caps the score before any coastline detail matters. Its border sits in the middle of the difficulty range — enough straight sections to anchor you, enough detail to punish a careless stroke.
- Difficulty
- medium
- Population
- 1.2 m
- Code
- CYP
Draw Cyprus
Practice · draw from memory
Cyprus
A four-step strategy for Cyprus
- 01
Draw a wide, shallow guide box in your head first — Cyprus is much wider than tall, and getting that ratio right is worth more than any single coastline.
- 02
Anchor one unmistakable feature — the straightest border section or the sharpest cape — and draw outward from it in a single continuous stroke.
- 03
Close the loop back to where you started. An open shape gets filled unpredictably and drags your score down.
- 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 Cyprus
Nobody has submitted a score for Cyprus yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Asia
- Subregion
- Western Asia
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 2.35
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Cyprus
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.
It narrows sharply toward the south
Measured across, the outline is 7.2× wider near its northern edge than near its southern one. A sketch that keeps the same width all the way down looks plausible and scores badly, because a missing taper is missing area.
Cyprus is wider than it is tall
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 2.34 to 1, a horizontal shape. Most failed attempts come from defaulting to a squarish blob — and unlike position, aspect ratio is never normalised away by the scorer.
Most of the mass sits to the west
The area centre is well off the middle of the outline, and the thin side is the part people extend too early. Draw the heavy side first and let the tail grow out of it.
Answer key: the real shape of Cyprus
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 188 units
- Width to height
- 2.34 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- Nothing over 8% of the perimeter
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.15× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Cyprus 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 Cyprus is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Cyprus. 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 Cyprus 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 eastern edge rather than just handing you a number.
Cyprus by the numbers
Cyprus covers 9,251 km², which makes it the 161st largest of 190 countries in the game and the 42nd largest in Asia. The capital is Nicosia at about 35°N, 33°E, and it sits in Western Asia. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.
Next to Cyprus: 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 Cyprus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cyprusthis page | 9,251 km² | 1.2 m | Nicosia | 1 | — |
 Armenia | 29,743 km² | 3.0 m | Yerevan | 1 | 3.22× |
 Azerbaijan | 86,600 km² | 10.0 m | Baku | 2 | 9.36× |
 Bahrain | 765 km² | 1.6 m | Manama | 1 | 0.08× |
 Georgia | 69,700 km² | 3.7 m | Tbilisi | 1 | 7.53× |
 Iraq | 438,317 km² | 39.3 m | Baghdad | 1 | 47× |
 Jordan | 89,342 km² | 10.1 m | Amman | 1 | 9.66× |
 Kuwait | 17,818 km² | 4.2 m | Kuwait City | 2 | 1.93× |
 Lebanon | 10,452 km² | 6.9 m | Beirut | 1 | 1.13× |
Draw these next
Countries near Cyprus 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 asia and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Cyprus drawing questions
How big is Cyprus?
Cyprus covers 9,251 km², ranking 161st of 190 countries here by land area and 42nd in Asia. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 96.2 km on a side.
What is the capital of Cyprus?
The capital is Nicosia at about 35°N, 33°E. 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 Cyprus on a blank map.
Is Cyprus hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 40% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with no straight edge longer than 8% of the perimeter to anchor it.
Does Cyprus border any country?
Cyprus has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as medium.