the children's drawing space with colourful pictures on the wall and bean bags scattered over the floor — Drawing games – Workshop pictures

My Top Fun Drawing Games

Drawing is Fun. There is nothing quite like putting a pen or pencil to paper and seeing what emerges. I grew up playing fun drawing games and have developed more along the way. Here are my top 3 drawing games. They are simple but amazing fun. They can also be played pretty much anywhere.

Shapes

The Shape Game has been around in many forms for a long while, but I do want to credit Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne, for reintroducing me to it. The rules are very simple. The first person draws an abstract shape, or any sort of squiggle and the second person, ideally using a different colour pen, transforms it into something else. Does that squiggle remind you of a castle? A dog? A face? It is amazing what can be created and how it works your imagination.

Here are some examples from a recent workshop I ran.

Children's drawings made by combining shapes — Shapes at the Globe

Combo Creature

Players take turns in drawing a section of the man or animal. Any number of people can play this game and at any age too, which is the delight of it. You are never too old to see what you can create.
Each player starts with a piece of paper and a pencil/pen and sits somewhere where their paper can’t be seen by the other players. They then draw the head and neck. This can be of a person, an alien, an animal, in fact anything at all. They then fold the top of the paper over so that only a little bit of the neck is visible. This is when everyone swaps papers.
Next everyone draws the torso, using the neck lines as their starting point, so it all joins up. Again fold the paper down to hid the drawing, just letting the bottom of the waist show. Pass to the next player.
Next Draw from the waist to the knees. Fold the paper and pass to the next player.
Then draw from the knees to the feet. Once again fold the paper and pass it on.
The final part is optional, but can be quite fun. Without looking at the picture, name the drawing and pass it on once more.
Finally, each person unfolds the piece of paper they are holding to reveal the funny combo creature that has been created and the name that has been given to it.

Here are some combo’s from a recent workshop.

Children's drawings of people created by different children adding parts to the picture — Combo Creatures from workshop

Simon says, Draw!

Another fun, interactive game. Following along the lines of the Simon Says game. ‘Simon says draw a tree’, ‘Simon says draw a circle’ he could also just say ‘swap pens’, or ‘swap drawing sheets’. If Simon says do something, it needs to be done. One person is designated to be Simon and players must only obey commands that begin with the words ‘Simon says’. If they start the command without saying ‘Simon Says first’, no one should take any notice. It is a good exercise in concentration and focus as well as creativity. It is also great if children are learning about shapes and colours. In this case you could say ‘Simon says draw a blue square’.