Mismatched Bodies
When I was little, we used to play a game called ‘mismatched bodies’. You’d fold a piece of into four horizontal sections, and take it in turns to draw part of a character, starting from the head and working your way down. Before passing it on, you’d fold over what you had drawn to hide it from the next person, leaving a couple of guide lines at the top of their bit so they knew where to start.
The game has a bona fide art history heritage. The Surrealists started doing what they called ‘cadavre exquis’ (exquisite corpse) drawings in Paris around 1925. Jake and Dinos Chapman produced a beautiful set of surreal etchings called Exquisite Corpse using a similar exchange in the 1990s.
For me, the best bit about these drawings is the final reveal. I’ve been using this game in the drawing classes I teach in Oxford, and I love how the figure that emerges takes on a character of it’s own. An unusual magic occurs when one persons imagination collides with another. And when you’re only drawing a quarter of a character, your imagination is willing to taking risks and more fanciful ideas come out to play.
