8 Drawing Challenges for a Themed Creative Evening

No talent needed. These sketching games are all about laughing at the results.

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1. Blind contour portraits

Draw your partner's face without looking at the page or lifting the pen. The results look wonderfully wonky. Keep them all: they become better with age.

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2. One-line animal challenge

Draw a cat, a giraffe, or an octopus without lifting the pen from the paper. The continuous line teaches you to see shapes, and the drawings look surprisingly elegant.

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3. Exquisite corpse portraits

Fold a sheet into three: the first person draws a head, the second a body, the third legs. Unfold to reveal a strange creature. It has been played since the surrealists of the 1920s.

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4. Sixty-second speed sketch

Set a timer and draw an object the group chooses. Then swap drawings and improve each other's. It gets rid of perfectionism, quickly.

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5. Draw with your non-dominant hand

Sit two rivals face to face and have them draw each other using the wrong hand. Everyone ends up laughing so hard the pencil wobbles.

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6. Emoji-to-masterpiece

Pick three random emojis and combine them into a single scene. A pizza, a rocket, and a ghost might become a haunted delivery service. It rewards imagination over skill.

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7. Watercolour wet-on-wet party

Wet the paper, drop in colours, and let them bleed. Add a sentence like 'sunset over a quiet town' and paint whatever comes. It is relaxing and hard to get wrong.

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8. Collaborative mural on kraft paper

Roll out a long strip of paper, give everyone markers, and start from opposite ends. The drawings meet in the middle. Hang the finished piece in the hallway.