Asia · South-Eastern Asia
How to draw Timor-Leste from memory
Timor-Leste 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. 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
- 1.3 m
- Code
- TLS
Draw Timor-Leste
Practice · draw from memory
Timor-Leste
A four-step strategy for Timor-Leste
- 01
Draw a wide, shallow guide box in your head first — Timor-Leste 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 Timor-Leste
Nobody has submitted a score for Timor-Leste yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Asia
- Subregion
- South-Eastern Asia
- Outline pieces
- 2
- Detail score
- 3.44
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Timor-Leste
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.
5% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 2 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 95% 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 north edge is a ruler line, not a coast
About 13% 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.
It narrows sharply toward the south
Measured across, the outline is 2.7× 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.
Answer key: the real shape of Timor-Leste
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 163 units
- Width to height
- 2.69 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 2
- Longest straight run
- 13% of the perimeter, along the north
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.13× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Timor-Leste 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 Timor-Leste is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Timor-Leste. 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 Timor-Leste 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.
Timor-Leste by the numbers
Timor-Leste covers 14,874 km², which makes it the 153rd largest of 190 countries in the game and the 39th largest in Asia. The capital is Dili at about 9°S, 126°E, and it sits in South-Eastern Asia. It touches Indonesia, and 95% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Timor-Leste: 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 Timor-Leste |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timor-Lestethis page | 14,874 km² | 1.3 m | Dili | 2 | — |
 Indonesia | 1,904,569 km² | 270.6 m | Jakarta | 13 | 128× |
Draw these next
Countries near Timor-Leste 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 asia and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Timor-Leste drawing questions
How big is Timor-Leste?
Timor-Leste covers 14,874 km², ranking 153rd of 190 countries here by land area and 39th in Asia. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 122.0 km on a side.
What is the capital of Timor-Leste?
The capital is Dili at about 9°S, 126°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 Timor-Leste on a blank map.
Is Timor-Leste hard to draw?
It is rated medium, and carries more outline detail than 66% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 2 landmasses, with about 13% of the perimeter running dead straight along the north.
Which countries border Timor-Leste?
Timor-Leste shares a land border with Indonesia. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.