Top 18 Unintimidating Art Styles to Create for Beginners Facing a Blank Page - Goh Ling Yong
That vast, empty, brilliant white page. It stares back at you, a silent challenge. For so many aspiring artists, this is the most intimidating part of the creative process. The "blank page syndrome" is real, and it can whisper doubts into your ear: "What if I mess it up?" "I don't know what to draw." "I'm not good enough."
Let's quiet those voices together. The secret to overcoming this hurdle isn't to suddenly become a master artist overnight. It's about changing the goal. Instead of trying to create a masterpiece, let's aim to simply make a mark, to play, to explore. The pressure vanishes when the goal is discovery, not perfection. This is a philosophy I champion on the Goh Ling Yong blog—art is a journey, and every journey begins with a single, joyful step.
This list is your personal toolkit for taking that step. It’s a collection of 18 unintimidating, wonderfully forgiving, and incredibly fun art styles perfect for beginners. Forget complex anatomy or photorealistic shading. We're diving into styles where the process is just as important as the result, and where "mistakes" are often happy accidents. Pick one that sparks your curiosity, grab a simple tool, and let's turn that blank page into a playground.
1. Mindful Doodling & Zentangle
This is the ultimate no-pressure starting point. Doodling isn't about creating a recognizable image; it's about the simple, meditative act of letting your pen wander. Zentangle is a more structured form of this, where you fill small, defined areas with repetitive patterns. It’s incredibly relaxing and the results are always surprisingly intricate and beautiful.
The magic of this style is its focus on process over outcome. You don't need a grand idea. You just need to draw one line, then another. It teaches you to be present and let go of expectations. The structured patterns of Zentangle, called "tangles," are easy to learn, and combining them creates stunning, abstract tiles of art.
- Get Started Tip: Grab a fine-liner pen and a small square of paper (a Post-it note is perfect!). Draw a simple string or a shape to divide the square. Now, fill each section with a different, simple pattern: straight lines, wavy lines, circles, dots, or cross-hatching. Don't overthink it—just fill the space.
2. Geometric Abstract Art
If realism feels daunting, why not abandon it completely? Geometric abstract art focuses on the satisfying purity of shapes, lines, and colors. Think of artists like Piet Mondrian. There's no pressure to make your square look like a "real" square; it just needs to be a square. This style is all about composition, balance, and color relationships.
You can create dynamic, modern-looking pieces with just a ruler, a pencil, and some color. It's a fantastic way to learn about color theory and composition without the stress of accurate representation. Play with overlapping shapes, contrasting colors, and varying line weights to create something that is uniquely yours.
- Get Started Tip: Use painter's tape to mask off sharp-edged shapes on your paper or canvas. Fill in the shapes with acrylic paint or even markers. Once it's dry, peel off the tape to reveal crisp, perfect lines. It's incredibly satisfying!
3. Line Art & Contour Drawing
Line art strips drawing back to its most essential element: the line. Contour drawing is a specific exercise where you draw the outline of an object without lifting your pen, focusing only on the edges and shapes you see. It trains your eye to connect with your hand, and the results are often wonderfully expressive and quirky.
The best part is that it's not supposed to look perfect or realistic. The wobbly lines and distorted proportions are part of its charm. A fun variation is "blind contour drawing," where you don't look at the paper at all while you draw. It’s a hilarious and freeing exercise that produces truly unique results.
- Get Started Tip: Place your non-dominant hand in front of you in an interesting pose. Now, with a pen on paper, trace the outline of your hand with your eyes only—don't look down at the paper until you're finished. Embrace the weird and wonderful drawing that appears.
4. Simple Botanical Doodles
Nature is one of the most forgiving subjects. Leaves, flowers, and branches come in infinite shapes and sizes, so there's no "wrong" way to draw them. Botanical doodling focuses on creating simple, stylized representations of plants. Think simple outlines for leaves, spirals for rosebuds, and little circles for berries.
This style is perfect for filling a sketchbook page, creating greeting cards, or decorating your journal. You can start with a single stem and slowly add leaves and flowers, letting the plant "grow" across the page. It's a calming activity that connects you to the beauty of the natural world.
- Get Started Tip: Look up a "simple leaf doodle" tutorial online. You'll find you can create dozens of different leaf types with just a few basic strokes. Try combining 3-4 different leaf shapes and a simple flower on a single winding vine.
5. Watercolor Washes & Blobs
Watercolor can seem intimidating, but its most beginner-friendly technique is also one of its most beautiful: the wash. This involves simply laying down fluid, transparent layers of color and letting them blend and bleed into each other on the paper. You're not painting an object; you're painting with color itself.
Let go of control and let the water do the work. The unpredictable way the pigments mix and dry creates gorgeous, organic textures. You can create beautiful abstract backgrounds, dreamy landscapes, or just colorful blobs. Once dry, you can even draw on top of them with a pen (see Mixed Media, #18!).
- Get Started Tip: Use watercolor paper (it's essential!). Wet an area of the paper with clean water, then touch your wet, pigment-loaded brush to it. Watch the color explode and travel across the wet area. Try dropping a second color in next to it and see how they mingle.
6. Collage & Paper Art
Don't want to draw at all? No problem! Collage is the art of assembling different forms, thus creating a new whole. All you need is paper, scissors, and glue. You can use old magazines, newspapers, colored construction paper, wrapping paper, or even fabric scraps.
This style is all about composition, texture, and storytelling. You can create abstract patterns, surreal landscapes, or fun characters by cutting and pasting. It removes the pressure of creating from scratch and reframes art as an act of arrangement and discovery.
- Get Started Tip: Choose a simple theme, like "ocean" or "city." Flip through a magazine and cut out any colors, textures, or images that fit your theme. Arrange them on a piece of paper without gluing them down first. Play with the composition until you find something you love, then stick it all down.
7. Stippling & Pointillism
If you can make a dot, you can do stippling. This technique involves using countless tiny dots to build up tone, texture, and form. Areas with dots clustered closely together appear dark, while areas with sparse dots appear light. It's a slow, meditative process that forces you to be patient.
The result is a unique, textured piece of art that looks incredibly complex, even though it was made with the simplest mark possible. You can use it to shade simple shapes or create entire, detailed images. It works wonderfully with fine-liner pens of varying thicknesses.
- Get Started Tip: Draw a simple shape, like a circle. Now, using a pen, start adding dots to one side of the circle to create a shadow. Make the dots very dense near the edge and gradually spread them out as you move toward the "lit" side of the sphere.
8. Minimalism
Minimalism is the art of saying more with less. This style embraces empty space and focuses on extreme simplicity. A minimalist piece might consist of a single, elegant line, a few carefully placed shapes, or a very limited color palette.
For beginners, this is freeing. You don't have to worry about filling the whole page or adding complex details. The goal is to distill an idea down to its purest, most essential form. It's a powerful exercise in composition and intentionality.
- Get Started Tip: On a clean white page, use a black marker to draw one single, continuous line that loops and weaves around the page without crossing itself. Or, paint three simple, solid-colored circles of different sizes, carefully placing them to create a sense of balance.
9. Mandalas
Mandala is a Sanskrit word for "circle," and these designs are built around a central point, expanding outwards in symmetrical, geometric patterns. While they can look incredibly intricate, they are built from very simple, repetitive shapes. The symmetry makes them incredibly satisfying to create.
Drawing mandalas is a highly therapeutic and calming practice. The repetition and structure allow your mind to focus, quieting anxious thoughts. You can use a compass and protractor for perfect precision or draw them freehand for a more organic, whimsical feel.
- Get Started Tip: Start by drawing a series of concentric circles lightly in pencil. Divide the circles into 6 or 8 equal "pie" slices. Now, in one slice, draw a simple shape, like a petal or a triangle. Repeat that exact same shape in all the other slices. Continue building outwards, layer by layer.
10. Silhouette Art
A silhouette is the dark shape and outline of someone or something visible against a brighter background. This is a fantastic style for beginners because you don't have to worry about details, shading, or perspective. You only need to capture the basic outline of an object.
The magic comes from the contrast. You can paint a simple, vibrant sunset with watercolors or acrylics, let it dry, and then paint a solid black shape—like a tree, a cityscape, or an animal—over the top. The effect is dramatic and instantly recognizable.
- Get Started Tip: Create a beautiful watercolor wash background using warm colors like red, orange, and yellow. Once it's completely dry, use black acrylic paint or an ink pen to draw the simple outline of a mountain range and some scraggly pine trees in the foreground.
11. Kawaii Doodles
"Kawaii" is the Japanese word for "cute," and this art style is all about creating simple, adorable characters and objects. The formula is easy: take a basic shape (circle, oval, rectangle), give it two simple dots for eyes, a tiny mouth, and maybe some rosy cheeks. Almost anything can be made kawaii!
This style is incredibly cheerful and forgiving. Proportions are exaggerated to be cute, not realistic. A coffee cup, a cloud, a piece of sushi, a ghost—they can all become lovable characters with just a few simple marks.
- Get Started Tip: Draw a simple mushroom shape. Add two small, widely spaced black dots for eyes. Draw a tiny "u" shape for a mouth right between them. Voilà! You have a cute kawaii mushroom. Now try it with a star or a slice of toast.
12. Negative Space Art
Instead of drawing the object itself, this style challenges you to draw the space around the object. It's a total mind-bender that fundamentally changes how you see the world. By focusing on the shapes of the gaps and voids, the object you're drawing magically appears.
A simple way to play with this is by using tape. You can create a shape on your paper with masking tape (like a letter or a simple animal), paint or scribble all over the page, and then peel the tape off to reveal the clean, white shape left behind. It's a "wow" moment every time.
- Get Started Tip: Place a simple object, like a pair of scissors or a house key, on a piece of paper. Instead of tracing its outline, use a pencil to shade in all the areas on the paper around the object. When you remove the object, its shape will be defined by your shading.
13. Simple Pattern Making
Humans are hard-wired to love patterns. Creating them is a simple and rewarding process. All you need to do is create one small, simple drawing—called a motif—and then repeat it over and over again to fill the page.
Your motif can be anything: a simple flower, a geometric shape, a squiggle, or a series of dots. You can repeat it in a neat grid or in a more random, scattered way. Playing with different colors and scales can create endlessly fascinating results. This is the foundation of textile and wallpaper design!
- Get Started Tip: Draw a small, simple star. Now draw another one right next to it. Keep going until you have a full row. Start the next row underneath, perhaps offsetting them slightly. Fill the entire page. Then try it again with a different shape, like a wavy line.
14. Block Printing / Stamping
This is a wonderfully tactile way to make art. You don't need a fancy printing press; you can start with a potato! Carve a simple shape into the flat surface of a potato half, an eraser, or a block of craft foam. Dip it in paint and press it onto paper.
You're creating your own custom stamp. This is a fantastic way to make patterns (see #13), greeting cards, or even custom gift wrap. The slightly imperfect, rustic texture of a block print is a huge part of its charm, so don't worry about carving a perfect shape.
- Get Started Tip: Cut a potato in half. With a knife (and adult supervision if needed!), carefully carve a simple shape, like a heart or a triangle, into the cut surface. The shape should be raised. Pat it dry, dip it in acrylic paint, and stamp away!
15. Expressive Abstract Art
Where geometric abstract is about control, expressive abstract is about freedom and emotion. This is where you can let loose with paint splatters, drips, and bold, energetic brushstrokes. Think of artists like Jackson Pollock. The focus is on the physical act of painting.
This is art therapy at its finest. Put on some music, lay down a drop cloth, and just let your feelings guide your hand. There is no right or wrong. It's all about conveying energy and emotion through color and texture.
- Get Started Tip: Get a canvas or thick paper and some fluid acrylic paints. Instead of a brush, try dripping the paint directly from the bottle or using a stick to fling and drizzle it onto the surface. Use colors that reflect your current mood.
16. Pixel Art
If you love retro video games and appreciate structure, pixel art is for you. This digital art style is created on a grid, where you fill in individual squares (pixels) to create an image. It's like a digital version of cross-stitch or mosaic.
The constraints of the grid make it very unintimidating. You don't have to worry about smooth curves or complex shading. You just have to decide which squares to fill in. There are many free online pixel art editors you can use right in your browser.
- Get Started Tip: Use a piece of graph paper and some colored pencils. Try to create a simple object, like an apple or a sword from a classic video game. Focus on a simple outline first, then fill it in with color, one square at a time.
17. Simple Hand Lettering
You don't need to be a master calligrapher to create beautiful text-based art. Simple hand lettering focuses on drawing letters rather than writing them. You can start by simply writing a word in your best print, then going back to thicken all the downstrokes (any stroke where your pen moved down the page). This is called "faux calligraphy" and it looks fantastic.
Choose a short, positive word or phrase like "Breathe," "Joy," or "Create." The act of slowly and deliberately drawing each letter can be very mindful and relaxing. You're treating each letter as its own little work of art.
- Get Started Tip: Write a word in cursive with a regular pen. Now, identify every part of each letter where your pen was moving downwards. Go back and draw a second line next to these downstrokes and fill in the gap. Instantly, your writing has a beautiful, weighted look.
18. Simple Mixed Media
Why choose just one style when you can combine them? Mixed media is simply using more than one medium or technique in a single piece. For beginners, this can be a fantastic way to build up layers and create interesting effects without needing to master any single technique.
The key is to keep it simple. Don't try to combine oil paints, clay, and charcoal all at once. Instead, try a simple and classic pairing. The layers add depth and visual interest, and it allows you to cover up parts you don't like while emphasizing the parts you do. As my mentor and friend Goh Ling Yong often says, "Art is about creative problem-solving, and mixed media gives you more tools to solve with."
- Get Started Tip: Create a background using watercolor washes (see #5). Let it dry completely. Then, using a fine-liner pen, draw some simple botanical doodles (see #4) on top of the colorful background. The contrast between the soft, blended color and the crisp black lines is stunning.
Your Turn to Create
The blank page is no longer a threat. It's an invitation. It's a space filled with potential, and you now have 18 different keys to unlock it. The most important thing to remember is that there is no test. This isn't about producing a gallery-worthy piece on your first try; it's about the joy of making something that didn't exist before.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pick just one style from this list that sounds fun to you. Not the one you think you'll be best at, but the one that genuinely sparks a little bit of excitement. Give yourself 15 minutes, put on some music, and just play.
I would absolutely love to see what you create or hear about your experience. Which style are you going to try first? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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