These 30 Trippy Drawing Ideas That Will Revolutionize Your Art

Get ready to stretch your imagination with these 30 trippy drawing ideas! These prompts will help put an end to repetition in your drawing process by introducing surreal elements to your sketches. These ideas are focused on different aspects of perception and reality. They will help you break away from typical ways of thinking about your pencil drawings and help you focus on the more colorful and vivid parts of your mind. With these ideas, you will gain the ability to express yourself artistically, regardless of your skill level, whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced artist! Grab your pencil and get ready to draw an entirely new world.

Warped Reality Landscapes

Find a famous location and create a new view of it that defies logic and gravity, using weird, unexpected changes. This is a great idea for artists wanting to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Melting Clocks in Suburbia

In the style of Dali, imagine what it would be like if clocks and other objects dissolved into the surroundings. These moments illustrate time escaping us and add more thought and depth to a drawing.

Floating Islands in the Sky

Floating chunks of earth with trees, and waterfalls are amazing places to visit. Where would you travel to in this amazing gravity-less place?

Eyes in the Forest

A forest looks strange when it has a lot watching branches. This creates an unsettling feeling of being watched and leaves you to wonder about the mysteries in the woods.

Geometric Animal Forms

Animals can be made from geometric shapes and can be a good visual example of combining organic and structural designs.

Surreal Cityscapes

Fantasy buildings and dream elements can help us think differently about our cities. This can change how we look at the urban environment. The way the building is designed can make the city feel familiar and alien.

Cosmic Ocean Creatures

The prompt encourages you to imagine star covered sea creatures while connecting the deep sea and space. This explores both worlds.

Faces in the Clouds

With the drawing of a face in the clouds, capture the moment to help people think of the calm and peaceful nature of being present in life.

Mystical Doorways

Make illustrations of doorways connected to other worlds and give them a mystique to entice people to discover the secrets of each doorway. This is an example of building interest for what lies beyond.

Liquid Moon

The moon is made of solid rock, but what if it was made of liquid? How might the moon look with a rippling, flowing surface? Would it defy everything we know about moons?

Nature’s Weave

Imagine a world where all parts of nature, trees, plants, etc. come together to form a beautiful living tapestry.

Butterflies in Reverse

Envision butterflies in reverse. Instead of metamorphosis, focus on gentle human figures emerging from the wings of butterflies.

Time as a River

Imagine the river of time as a flowing body of water with relics, calendars, clock, and other things that represent the current of time floating downstream. This perspective is unique when thinking of the river of time.

Forest of Hands

Create a drawing of a dreamlike forest filled with trees having hands instead of branches. The hands are all stretched toward the sky.

Celestial Fish

Think of the fish combined the sky and the ocean.

Inverted Reflections

Imagine a universe where the reflections on the water’s surface are reversed so the worlds above and below are mirrors, flipping reality and balance.

Flowering Skulls

Create an effective contrast by combining the beauty of flowers with skulls and their symbolic meanings related to life, death, and rebirth.

Falling Stars and Rising Oceans

Picture a scene where the sky and ocean blend as one and shooting stars cascade down onto an endless night. The stars collide with crashing waves and ignite a battle between two incredible forces of nature.

The All-Seeing Third Eye

One of the most iconic tripy designs would be a gigantic eye opening in the center of a person’s forehead with bright beams of colors and a galaxy in the center of the iris. Add some sacred geometric shapes all around and let the details wrap around themselves.

Glowing Mushroom Field

Cartoonish toadstools appear to be pulsating as they hum and glow in the dark. Stacking warm and cool colors creates movement in the entire patch.

Hypnotic Mandala

Start from the center of the page and build layers outward in a circular pattern. Let each layer stretch and warp the mandala so the patterns lose their symmetry and become dizzying. The joy of drawing a mandala is in the repetition, and oddly, it’s a very calming activity.

The Impossible Staircase

The old stairway that appears to go on endlessly yet actually leads to nowhere looks so cool on paper but is really just another simple geometry trick that anyone could do.

Checkerboard Into Space

The perceptible starting state of a checkerboard pattern is clean and orderly. Over time though, the appearance of the far edge begins to curl, ripple, and drip into some sort of star-studded void. It is the contrast of pure order and total chaos that makes it successful.

Infinite Fractal Spiral

Infinite spirals of patterns containing the same smaller patterns. The galaxy peacock variation is a feathery growing spiral. It is fun to start!

Melting Self-Portrait

To begin with, create a simple face, and then imagine that, like warm wax, it begins to droop, drip, and slide off the page. The wax-like distortion and surreal elongation of the facial features is as disturbing as it is wonderfully enjoyable.

Stacked Eyes

‘Eyes on Eyes on Eyes’ is certainly trippy. Picture a tower made up of eyeballs, each one blinking on its own and looking at you while housing a different mini world in their irises.

Rippling Reflection

Imagine below the surface of a lake. Draw an object above the surface of the lake. Detail the reflection of the object drawing how warped and distored the reflection is. Focus on how the reflection contrasts with reality.

The Anti-Gravity Room

A mundane room. Where the rules break and go quiet. The furniture here is all floating. Doors open to an outside sky. You can walk horizontally because of the gravity here. Everyday objects that are gone wrong are far more discomforting than any monster.

The Machine Elf

The extravagant being that comes to mind when thinking of psychedelia is this half creature, half kaleidoscope. It’s endlessly fun to make up as you go along. An intricately ornate figure like a jewel, made of interlocking patterns and glowing eyes.

The Aura Silhouette

A simple drawing of a person, or maybe just a face, with colored energy rings around them. It’s super easy to draw, creates a nice lighting effect, and a great way to finish a sketchbook spread.