Strava art ideas: 40 shapes from a 5 km smiley to a 100 km dragon

The best Strava art idea is the one whose shape survives the street grid. Before choosing, the one rule: fewer, cleaner strokes beat detail. A drawing is seen on a map zoomed out to fit the route; anything smaller than a couple of blocks turns into noise. Pick from the list by how far you want to go and how many pen lifts you can plan.

Closed shapes, no pen lifts — 3 to 8 km

The first drawing should be one of these. Run the outline and you are done.

1. Heart — the classic; two lobes need a park or diagonals. 2. Circle — a roundabout is cheating and still counts. 3. Star — five straight strokes, one loop, no lifts. 4. Triangle, square, diamond — for the shape of the grid itself. 5. Fish — a pointed oval with a tail; one line. 6. Egg and balloon (with the string as the way home). 7. Smiley — a circle, then two dots and a mouth as three short lifts. 8. Arrow — a long stroke with a head, pointing somewhere that matters. 9. Cloud — a scalloped loop, works in a park. 10. Leaf — an oval with a stem.

Letters and words — 1 to 2 km per letter

11. Initials — two letters, one or two lifts. 12. HI, OK, NO — short words in a grid are almost free. 13. A name — plan the lifts between letters along the same street. 14. A number — a race distance, an age, a year. 15. YES — see the proposal below. 16. HELLO on a long straight grid; the L's are the easy ones.

Animals — 10 to 60 km

The silhouette is everything. Head, back, legs, tail; skip the eyes.

17. Cat — a sitting cat is one loop with two ear points. 18. Dog — the running dog needs a lifted stroke for the far legs. 19. Rabbit — ears are the whole drawing. 20. Duck — head, beak, body, one line. 21. Whale — a long body and a tail; suits a coast road. 22. Snake — the river path *is* the snake. 23. Elephant — trunk and ear, 20 km. 24. Dinosaur — the T. rex and the velociraptor are Strava's favourites; 30 km and up. 25. Dragon — the 100 km one: a long body, spines as short lifts, a head with an open mouth. 26. Unicorn — a horse plus one lifted stroke.

Things — 5 to 30 km

27. Bike — two circles and a frame, for cyclists on a bike. 28. Running shoe — a sole and a laced upper. 29. Coffee cup with steam as three lifts. 30. Rocket — a pointed body and two fins. 31. House — a square and a triangle; the first drawing many people do. 32. Sailboat — hull and two triangle sails. 33. Guitar, key, umbrella — all one-line outlines with one detail lift.

Seasonal

34. Christmas tree — a triangle with a trunk, a star as a lift on top. 35. Reindeer — the head, antlers as two lifted strokes; the London Christmas rides made this famous. 36. Pumpkin — a ridged circle with a stem. 37. Easter bunny or egg. 38. A snowflake — six strokes through one centre, all lifts.

The proposal

39. MARRY ME — plan it in one grid so the letters line up, run it, screenshot it before you show anyone, and export the GPX the same day so the drawing exists somewhere other than a feed. The largest GPS drawing ever made was a proposal across Japan — the records. 40. A heart around the house — the simplest one, and the one that ends up on a wall.

Then what

The activity on Strava is the picture. If it is one worth keeping, export the GPX — free, any plan — and the shape can be drawn at any size as one clean line: the Strava art print. How to plan any of these so the strokes come out clean is in how to make Strava art.