Asia · South-Eastern Asia
How to draw Indonesia from memory
Indonesia is not one shape but 13 — 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
- 270.6 m
- Code
- IDN
Draw Indonesia
Practice · draw from memory
Indonesia
A four-step strategy for Indonesia
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Indonesia 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 12 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 Indonesia
Nobody has submitted a score for Indonesia yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Asia
- Subregion
- South-Eastern Asia
- Outline pieces
- 13
- Detail score
- 15.34
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Indonesia
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.
70% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 13 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 30% 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.
It narrows sharply toward the north
The outline is 2.5× 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.
Indonesia is wider than it is tall
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 2.86 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.
Answer key: the real shape of Indonesia
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 154 units
- Width to height
- 2.86 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 13
- Longest straight run
- Nothing over 8% of the perimeter
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.36× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Indonesia 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 Indonesia is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Indonesia. 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 Indonesia 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.
Indonesia by the numbers
Indonesia covers 1,904,569 km², which makes it the 13th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 4th largest in Asia. The capital is Jakarta at about 5°S, 120°E, and it sits in South-Eastern Asia. It touches Timor-Leste, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, and 30% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Indonesia: its land neighbours
Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing the countries that share this border side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.
| Country | Area | Population | Capital | Pieces | vs Indonesia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indonesiathis page | 1,904,569 km² | 270.6 m | Jakarta | 13 | — |
 Timor-Leste | 14,874 km² | 1.3 m | Dili | 2 | <0.01× |
 Malaysia | 330,803 km² | 31.9 m | Kuala Lumpur | 2 | 0.17× |
 Papua New Guinea | 462,840 km² | 8.8 m | Port Moresby | 3 | 0.24× |
Draw these next
Countries near Indonesia 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.
Indonesia drawing questions
How big is Indonesia?
Indonesia covers 1,904,569 km², ranking 13th of 190 countries here by land area and 4th in Asia. That is 4.1 times the area of Papua New Guinea.
What is the capital of Indonesia?
The capital is Jakarta at about 5°S, 120°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 Indonesia on a blank map.
Is Indonesia hard to draw?
It is rated hard, and carries more outline detail than 97% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 13 landmasses, with no straight edge longer than 8% of the perimeter to anchor it.
Which countries border Indonesia?
Indonesia shares a land border with Timor-Leste, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.