Europe · Southern Europe
How to draw Malta from memory
Malta comes in 2 separate pieces on the map. The main body is roughly as wide as it is tall; sketch that first, then place the smaller pieces relative to it. 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
- 503 k
- Code
- MLT
Draw Malta
Practice · draw from memory
Malta
A four-step strategy for Malta
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Malta 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 1 piece 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 Malta
Nobody has submitted a score for Malta yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Europe
- Subregion
- Southern Europe
- Outline pieces
- 2
- Detail score
- 4.07
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Malta
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.
20% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 2 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 80% 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 west edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 20% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the west. 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.
Malta is close to square
Width against height comes out at 1.22 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.
Answer key: the real shape of Malta
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 360 units
- Width to height
- 1.22 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 2
- Longest straight run
- 20% of the perimeter, along the west
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.25× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Malta 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 Malta is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Malta. 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 Malta 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.
Malta by the numbers
Malta covers 316 km², which makes it the 182nd largest of 190 countries in the game and the 40th largest in Europe. The capital is Valletta at about 36°N, 15°E, and it sits in Southern Europe. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.
Next to Malta: 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 Malta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maltathis page | 316 km² | 503 k | Valletta | 2 | — |
 Albania | 28,748 km² | 2.9 m | Tirana | 1 | 91× |
 Andorra | 468 km² | 77 k | Andorra la Vella | 1 | 1.48× |
 Bosnia and Herzegovina | 51,209 km² | 3.3 m | Sarajevo | 1 | 162× |
 Croatia | 56,594 km² | 4.1 m | Zagreb | 1 | 179× |
 Greece | 131,990 km² | 10.7 m | Athens | 3 | 418× |
 Italy | 301,336 km² | 60.3 m | Rome | 3 | 954× |
 Montenegro | 13,812 km² | 622 k | Podgorica | 1 | 44× |
 North Macedonia | 25,713 km² | 2.1 m | Skopje | 1 | 81× |
Draw these next
Countries near Malta 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 europe and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Malta drawing questions
How big is Malta?
Malta covers 316 km², ranking 182nd of 190 countries here by land area and 40th in Europe. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 17.8 km on a side.
What is the capital of Malta?
The capital is Valletta at about 36°N, 15°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 Malta on a blank map.
Is Malta hard to draw?
It is rated hard, and carries more outline detail than 75% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 2 landmasses, with about 20% of the perimeter running dead straight along the west.
Does Malta border any country?
Malta has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as hard.