Oceania · Polynesia
How to draw Tuvalu from memory
Tuvalu is a single continuous landmass, taller than it is wide. Lock that proportion in before you worry about any individual stretch of border. Its border is simple by world standards, which makes it a good place to build confidence — and also means a low score here has nowhere to hide.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Population
- 12 k
- Code
- TUV
Draw Tuvalu
Practice · draw from memory
Tuvalu
A four-step strategy for Tuvalu
- 01
Start with a tall, narrow mental guide box. Tuvalu is much taller than it is wide, and squashing it is the single most common mistake.
- 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 Tuvalu
Nobody has submitted a score for Tuvalu yet. Draw it above and you are first on this board.
Full leaderboard →Quick facts
- Continent
- Oceania
- Subregion
- Polynesia
- Outline pieces
- 1
- Detail score
- 2.26
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Tuvalu
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 18% 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.
Tuvalu is taller than it is wide
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 0.30 to 1, a vertical shape. Most failed attempts come from defaulting to a squarish blob — and unlike position, aspect ratio is never normalised away by the scorer.
Close the loop before adding detail
Tuvalu occupies a 132×440 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.
Answer key: the real shape of Tuvalu
- Box on the canvas
- 132 × 440 units
- Width to height
- 0.30 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 1
- Longest straight run
- 18% of the perimeter, along the east
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.04× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Tuvalu 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 Tuvalu is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Tuvalu. 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 Tuvalu 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.
Tuvalu by the numbers
Tuvalu covers 26 km², which makes it the 187th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 13th largest in Oceania. The capital is Funafuti at about 8°S, 178°E, 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 Tuvalu: 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 Tuvalu |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuvaluthis page | 26 km² | 12 k | Funafuti | 1 | — |
 Samoa | 2,842 km² | 197 k | Apia | 2 | 109× |
 Tonga | 747 km² | 104 k | Nuku'alofa | 3 | 29× |
 Australia | 7,692,024 km² | 25.4 m | Canberra | 1 | 295847× |
 Fiji | 18,272 km² | 890 k | Suva | 4 | 703× |
 Kiribati | 811 km² | 118 k | South Tarawa | 14 | 31× |
 Marshall Islands | 181 km² | 59 k | Majuro | 5 | 6.96× |
 Micronesia | 702 km² | 114 k | Palikir | 5 | 27× |
 Nauru | 21 km² | 13 k | Yaren | 1 | 0.81× |
Draw these next
Countries near Tuvalu 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.
Tuvalu drawing questions
How big is Tuvalu?
Tuvalu covers 26 km², ranking 187th of 190 countries here by land area and 13th in Oceania. Small enough to lie inside a square roughly 5.1 km on a side.
What is the capital of Tuvalu?
The capital is Funafuti at about 8°S, 178°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 Tuvalu on a blank map.
Is Tuvalu hard to draw?
It is rated easy, and carries more outline detail than 33% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 1 landmass, with about 18% of the perimeter running dead straight along the east.
Does Tuvalu border any country?
Tuvalu has no land borders: every metre of its outline is coastline, which is why it rates as easy even so — the coast simply does not fold back on itself.