Oceania · Polynesia
How to draw Samoa from memory
Samoa comes in 2 separate pieces on the map. The main body is wider than 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
- 197 k
- Code
- WSM
Draw Samoa
Practice · draw from memory
Samoa
A four-step strategy for Samoa
- 01
Draw a wide, shallow guide box in your head first — Samoa is much wider than tall, and getting that ratio right is worth more than any single coastline.
- 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 Samoa
Nobody has submitted a score for Samoa yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Oceania
- Subregion
- Polynesia
- Outline pieces
- 2
- Detail score
- 6.56
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Samoa
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.
40% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 2 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 60% 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 12% 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.
Samoa is wider than it is tall
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 2.22 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 Samoa
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 198 units
- Width to height
- 2.22 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 2
- Longest straight run
- 12% of the perimeter, along the west
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.06× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Samoa 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 Samoa is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Samoa. 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 Samoa 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.
Samoa by the numbers
Samoa covers 2,842 km², which makes it the 165th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 7th largest in Oceania. The capital is Apia at about 14°S, 172°W, and it sits in Polynesia. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.
Next to Samoa: 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 Samoa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samoathis page | 2,842 km² | 197 k | Apia | 2 | — |
 Tonga | 747 km² | 104 k | Nuku'alofa | 3 | 0.26× |
 Tuvalu | 26 km² | 12 k | Funafuti | 1 | <0.01× |
 Australia | 7,692,024 km² | 25.4 m | Canberra | 1 | 2707× |
 Fiji | 18,272 km² | 890 k | Suva | 4 | 6.43× |
 Kiribati | 811 km² | 118 k | South Tarawa | 14 | 0.29× |
 Marshall Islands | 181 km² | 59 k | Majuro | 5 | 0.06× |
 Micronesia | 702 km² | 114 k | Palikir | 5 | 0.25× |
 Nauru | 21 km² | 13 k | Yaren | 1 | <0.01× |
Draw these next
Countries near Samoa 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.
Samoa drawing questions
How big is Samoa?
Samoa covers 2,842 km², ranking 165th of 190 countries here by land area and 7th in Oceania. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 53.3 km on a side.
What is the capital of Samoa?
The capital is Apia at about 14°S, 172°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 Samoa on a blank map.
Is Samoa hard to draw?
It is rated hard, and carries more outline detail than 85% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 2 landmasses, with about 12% of the perimeter running dead straight along the west.
Does Samoa border any country?
Samoa has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as hard.