How to draw Sudan from memory

Three things that go wrong when people sketch Sudan

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 north edge is a ruler line, not a coast

  About 10% of the perimeter runs in one unbroken direction along the north. 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.

• Sudan is close to square

  Width against height comes out at 1.19 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.

• Close the loop before adding detail

  Sudan occupies a 440×369 unit box on the game canvas. Fill that box with one continuous closed stroke first: the scorer compares filled area, so an open outline loses the interior it never enclosed.

Why Sudan is scored this way

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

Sudan by the numbers

Sudan covers 1,886,068 km², which makes it the 14th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 3rd largest in Africa. The capital is Khartoum at about 15°N, 30°E, and it sits in Northern Africa. It touches Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya and South Sudan, and 100% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.

Next to Sudan: 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.

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

Country	Area	Population	Capital	Pieces	vs Sudan
Sudanthis page	1,886,068 km²	42.8 m	Khartoum	1	—
Central African Republic	622,984 km²	4.7 m	Bangui	1	0.33×
Chad	1,284,000 km²	15.9 m	N'Djamena	1	0.68×
Egypt	1,002,450 km²	100.4 m	Cairo	1	0.53×
Eritrea	117,600 km²	6.1 m	Asmara	1	0.06×
Ethiopia	1,104,300 km²	112.1 m	Addis Ababa	1	0.59×
Libya	1,759,540 km²	6.8 m	Tripoli	1	0.93×
South Sudan	619,745 km²	11.1 m	Juba	1	0.33×

Draw these next

Countries near Sudan 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.

Sudan drawing questions