The 6 Official Pictionary Categories
The official Pictionary board game uses 6 categories, each with a different card color. Here's what they mean and how to draw them effectively.
Person / Character
Any person — real or fictional, historical or contemporary. Draw the person themselves or their most iconic attribute.
💡 Drawing tip: Draw the most distinctive accessory or costume (astronaut's helmet, pirate's eye patch, chef's hat).
Place / Location
Any real or fictional location — countries, landmarks, rooms, or general settings. Draw the most iconic visual feature of the place.
💡 Drawing tip: Draw the silhouette or skyline. Landmarks are best recognized by their unique shape.
Animal
Any creature in the animal kingdom — mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, or mythical creatures. Draw their most distinctive features.
💡 Drawing tip: Exaggerate the most unique physical feature (elephant's trunk, giraffe's neck, narwhal's horn).
Object / Thing
Any tangible, physical object that can be touched. Focus on the distinctive shape and use of the object.
💡 Drawing tip: Show the object in use or in its natural context. A guitar being played is more recognizable than just the shape.
Action / Verb
Any action, activity, or verb. Show movement through dynamic drawings. Use motion lines and arrows to convey the action.
💡 Drawing tip: Use stick figures in motion with dynamic poses. Motion lines and arrows help convey speed and direction.
Difficult / All Play
The toughest category — abstract concepts, idioms, unusual phrases, and hard-to-draw ideas. These words can be from any category but are extra challenging. In the board game, ALL teams draw simultaneously when a black card is drawn!
💡 Drawing tip: Decompose the word into drawable components. Use metaphors and symbols rather than literal representations.
Building a Themed Deck From Category Combos
Categories become most useful when you combine them into a deck that matches the night. The pattern we recommend: one anchor category, one wildcard, one difficulty ballast. The anchor sets the theme, the wildcard keeps guessers off balance, and the ballast makes sure the round never gets too easy or too brutal. A few combinations that reliably work:
- Kids party: Animals anchor + Food wildcard + easy-only ballast. Every word is drawable in three strokes.
- Office event: Objects anchor + Actions wildcard + medium ballast. Familiar things, unfamiliar combinations.
- Experienced group: Places anchor + Abstract wildcard + hard ballast. The abstract words force metaphor drawing.
- Holiday table: a seasonal list as anchor, like Christmas words, + People wildcard + mixed ballast.
Build the deck on the word list hub, copy the picks into slips or your own notes, and you have a game tuned to your table in ten minutes. The generator's category filters do the same job live, without any preparation.
Matching Categories to Your Players
Each category rewards a different skill, which is why the mix matters as much as the words. Animals and Objects reward fast, confident sketchers and favor younger players. Places reward travelers and trivia fans, because landmarks are drawn from memory. Actions reward physical comedy and read well even when the drawing is clumsy. People reward groups that share a culture, since professions and characters depend on recognition. Abstract rewards verbal thinkers who can build a visual metaphor under time pressure.
Use that map to balance teams: put one strong sketcher, one trivia head, and one word person on each side, and every category lands somewhere a teammate can shine. When a group keeps losing on one category, that is not bad luck; it is information about what to practice or avoid next time. House rules can lean into this too: double points for Actions, since they are hardest to guess, keeps the scoring interesting without changing the words.
Put categories into play with the free Pictionary word generator, or browse samples on the list of Pictionary words. Pair your category picks with the drawing ideas guide to turn any word into a drawable picture.