Africa · Western Africa
How to draw Mauritania from memory
Mauritania is a single continuous landmass, roughly as wide as it is tall. Lock that proportion in before you worry about any individual stretch of border. 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
- 4.5 m
- Code
- MRT
Draw Mauritania
Practice · draw from memory
Mauritania
A four-step strategy for Mauritania
- 01
Start by fixing the overall footprint. Mauritania 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
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 Mauritania
Nobody has submitted a score for Mauritania yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Africa
- Subregion
- Western Africa
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 2.3
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Mauritania
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 north
The outline is 1.9× 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.
Mauritania is close to square
Width against height comes out at 0.91 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 Mauritania
- Box on the canvas
- 400 × 440 units
- Width to height
- 0.91 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 17% of the perimeter, along the east
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.42× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Mauritania 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 Mauritania is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Mauritania. 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 Mauritania 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.
Mauritania by the numbers
Mauritania covers 1,030,700 km², which makes it the 27th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 11th largest in Africa. The capital is Nouakchott at about 20°N, 12°W, and it sits in Western Africa. It touches Algeria, Mali and Senegal, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Mauritania: 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 Mauritania |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mauritaniathis page | 1,030,700 km² | 4.5 m | Nouakchott | 1 | — |
 Algeria | 2,381,741 km² | 43.1 m | Algiers | 1 | 2.31× |
 Mali | 1,240,192 km² | 19.7 m | Bamako | 1 | 1.2× |
 Senegal | 196,722 km² | 16.3 m | Dakar | 1 | 0.19× |
Draw these next
Countries near Mauritania 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.
Mauritania drawing questions
How big is Mauritania?
Mauritania covers 1,030,700 km², ranking 27th of 190 countries here by land area and 11th in Africa. About 43% of the area of Algeria.
What is the capital of Mauritania?
The capital is Nouakchott at about 20°N, 12°W. 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 Mauritania on a blank map.
Is Mauritania hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 37% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 17% of the perimeter running dead straight along the east.
Which countries border Mauritania?
Mauritania shares a land border with Algeria, Mali and Senegal. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.