How to draw Libya from memory

Three things that go wrong when people sketch Libya

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.

• The east edge is a ruler line, not a coast

  About 17% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the east. 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 south

  Measured across, the outline is 3.3× 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.

• Libya is close to square

  Width against height comes out at 1.03 to 1, so the shape neither runs away sideways nor stretches vertically. Set that box first: with a near-square country almost every lost point comes from the coast detail inside it, not the footprint.

Why Libya is scored this way

Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Libya. 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 Libya 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.

Libya by the numbers

Libya covers 1,759,540 km², which makes it the 15th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 4th largest in Africa. The capital is Tripoli at about 25°N, 17°E, and it sits in Northern Africa. It touches Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Niger, Sudan and Tunisia, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.

Next to Libya: 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.

Libya compared with its land neighbours: area, population, capital and the number of separate outlines the game fills

Country	Area	Population	Capital	Pieces	vs Libya
Libyathis page	1,759,540 km²	6.8 m	Tripoli	1	—
Algeria	2,381,741 km²	43.1 m	Algiers	1	1.35×
Chad	1,284,000 km²	15.9 m	N'Djamena	1	0.73×
Egypt	1,002,450 km²	100.4 m	Cairo	1	0.57×
Niger	1,267,000 km²	23.3 m	Niamey	1	0.72×
Sudan	1,886,068 km²	42.8 m	Khartoum	1	1.07×
Tunisia	163,610 km²	11.7 m	Tunis	1	0.09×

Draw these next

Countries near Libya 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.

Libya drawing questions