Oceania · Micronesia
How to draw Kiribati from memory
Kiribati is not one shape but 14 — 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
- 118 k
- Code
- KIR
Draw Kiribati
Practice · draw from memory
Kiribati
A four-step strategy for Kiribati
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Kiribati 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 13 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 Kiribati
Nobody has submitted a score for Kiribati yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Oceania
- Subregion
- Micronesia
- Outline pieces
- 14
- Detail score
- 15.98
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Kiribati
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.
54% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 14 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 46% 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.
Not one straight edge to anchor the shape
The longest unbroken run in the whole outline is under 8% of the perimeter, and the coast folds back 1.63× on the smooth ring that would wrap it. Choose two deep inlets and one sharp promontory as anchors, and let everything between them stay approximate.
It narrows sharply toward the north
The outline is 2.3× 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 Kiribati
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 192 units
- Width to height
- 2.29 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 14
- Longest straight run
- Nothing over 8% of the perimeter
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.63× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Kiribati 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 Kiribati is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Kiribati. 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 Kiribati 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.
Kiribati by the numbers
Kiribati covers 811 km², which makes it the 169th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 8th largest in Oceania. The capital is South Tarawa at about 1°N, 173°E, and it sits in Micronesia. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.
Next to Kiribati: 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 Kiribati |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kiribatithis page | 811 km² | 118 k | South Tarawa | 14 | — |
 Marshall Islands | 181 km² | 59 k | Majuro | 5 | 0.22× |
 Micronesia | 702 km² | 114 k | Palikir | 5 | 0.87× |
 Nauru | 21 km² | 13 k | Yaren | 1 | 0.03× |
 Palau | 459 km² | 18 k | Ngerulmud | 2 | 0.57× |
 Australia | 7,692,024 km² | 25.4 m | Canberra | 1 | 9485× |
 Fiji | 18,272 km² | 890 k | Suva | 4 | 23× |
 New Zealand | 270,467 km² | 4.9 m | Wellington | 2 | 333× |
 Papua New Guinea | 462,840 km² | 8.8 m | Port Moresby | 3 | 571× |
Draw these next
Countries near Kiribati 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 the world and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Kiribati drawing questions
How big is Kiribati?
Kiribati covers 811 km², ranking 169th of 190 countries here by land area and 8th in Oceania. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 28.5 km on a side.
What is the capital of Kiribati?
The capital is South Tarawa at about 1°N, 173°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 Kiribati on a blank map.
Is Kiribati hard to draw?
It is rated hard, and carries more outline detail than 98% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 14 landmasses, with no straight edge longer than 8% of the perimeter to anchor it.
Does Kiribati border any country?
Kiribati has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as hard.