Exquisite Corpse (aka the drawing game)

For years now we have this one game that we always play on vacation. We call it a very sophisticated title, “the drawing game,” but it does in fact have a real name or at-least the concept has a name, Exquisite Corpse.

On a piece of paper you draw something from the head to the shoulders. Then you fold the paper down, hiding everything you just drew except 2 guidelines for the next player. You pass your paper to the left and pick up the player to your right’s paper to draw from the shoulders to the waist. Again you pass papers and draw from the waist to the knees, pass and draw from the knees to the feet. The result is a completely spontaneous creature created by 4 different people.

While this may sound challenging it’s quite simple in practice, just remember, head to shoulders, shoulders to waist, waist to knees, knees to feet. It’s great for stirring up creative energy even in the most non-creative types, because this is NOT a drawing contest. The figure will look wacky no matter what you do or how well you can draw

After several rounds of this exercise we usually get bored and move on to our more advanced version of the game:
1st person writes the 1st half of a sentence containing at least a noun and an adjective and folds down the paper again to hide what he has written. Ie: the sly fox
2nd person writes the 2nd half of a sentence containing at least a verb and an adverb. Ie: drove quickly
3rd person reads both parts of the sentence and draws it. Then folds down the paper to again cover the words.
4th person looks at the drawing and writes down what they think the original sentence says.

The result is always a hoot and enviably inspired by lots of tidbits and inside jokes from the weekend, which is a great way to capture all the fun you are having on vacation.

I have about 300 of these stacked up from over the years. We’ve even started a website of our favorites. These are just a few examples.