5 Drawing Games for Hours of Winter Night Fun

By Milan Art Institute on December 29, 2020
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5 Drawing Games for Hours of Winter Night Fun

Photo caption: Drawing games, like Exquisite Corpse, show you what happens when you combine a bunch of silly drawings together. Image by Pexels from Pixabay.

Most artists understand that drawing counts as a foundational skill. The ability to express their ideas in a drawing means they can work out ideas for paintings, communicate difficult concepts and keep their artistic eyes sharp throughout their careers. And the only way to truly develop excellent drawing skills is to draw a lot.

While our courses, like our Drawing Essentials course or even the Mastery Program, provide artists with the opportunity to practice their skills, they can begin to feel a bit academic if they aren’t balanced with a bit of fun.

That’s where drawing games come in. Drawing games add an element of fun to your drawing practice, while still giving you many of the benefits of doodling and drawing. 

If you’re looking for something to do to make a winter night a little more fun, then try one of these five drawing games to keep your skills sharp.

5 Ideas for Cool Drawing Games

  1. Pictionary: Pictionary is the draw and guess game that has given people hours of fun for decades. Nowadays, it’s possible to buy a board game and a video game version of it, but really, you don’t even need those. All you need is some paper and pencils, plus some drawing prompts. Divide yourself up into teams and take turns guessing what your teammates are drawing.

To help you out, we’ve compiled some drawing ideas/ prompts for you to use for your games.

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  1. Magic Mirror: This drawing game encourages you all to draw together at the same time. Here’s how it works. You pick one person to be the leader of the round. The leader draws a shape, a line or something else on his or her paper. (Keep it small.) 

Everyone else tries to draw exactly the same thing on their papers. This teaches artists how to draw what they see. If you use a timer, participating artists also learn how to draw quickly, which sharpens their skills. Just set the timer for a minute or two, depending on the difficulty of the leader’s drawing, and go!

  1. Exquisite Corpse Game: Thought up by the Surrealists - of course - this drawing/ guessing game keeps your drawing and your imagination skills sharp. It’s easy to play. Just grab several loose sheets of paper and some drawing tools

One person starts a drawing, but doesn’t finish it. He or she then folds the paper so that the drawing is hidden and passes it on to the next person, who again draws on the paper. This drawing-and-folding ritual continues until everyone has had a chance to draw on the paper. Once the drawing is done, open up the paper to see the final drawing.  

  1. Paired Blind Contour: Blind contour drawing requires you to draw an object without looking at your paper and without removing your pencil from the paper. To work with a partner, pick an object that both of you can draw at the same time - a coffee mug, a container of  pencils, a stuffed toy, etc. 

Each player will do a blind contour drawing of the object for an agreed upon time frame. Five to 10 minutes should do it. After all the players are done, compare your drawings. 

  1. Picture Diction: This is a great drawing game for developing an artist’s visual memory and imagination. The concept is easy. Take a stack of pictures and choose one. One person will describe the object in the picture to the artists who are drawing. The drawing artists can’t look at the reference picture and must only draw based on the description given to them. 

Give each artist 10 to 15 minutes at the most to draw the picture being described to them. Once the drawing session is over, compare drawings. Each artist should take turns describing a picture while the others in the group draw. 

If you need some reference photos for this game, you can find some photos and drawings here

Here Are a Few More Articles About Drawing

Urban Sketching Ideas: 6 Tips for Going on a Personal Sketch Crawl 

The Sketchbook Project: How to Get Motivated to Draw Everyday 

5 Reasons Why Artists Keep a Daily Sketchbook 

Milan Art Institute
Milan Art Institute

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