A nail printing apparatus includes a finger/toe placement section, a drawing tool touching a finger/toe nail and making drawing on the finger/toe nail, and a drive unit which moves the drawing tool. When the drive unit moves the drawing tool while drawing, the drive unit is controlled to perform drawing direction limiting processing in which the drawing tool is allowed to move from a first to a second point of the surface of the nail which is lower than the first point and the drawing tool is prohibited from moving from the second to the first point in a first area of the nail surface set on one side of the nail center line, and in a second area of the nail surface set on the other side of the center line.