Clancy's Dicey Art game

creative play

Over several mornings I worked on this sketchbook page; handwriting the phrase I often say about creativity one morning and during other mornings painting the flowers and butterfly.

Then I read a newsletter¹ by my friend

Rebecca Holden

in which she describes several creative writing techniques that use artificial constraints as a way to loosen up and get wildly creative with words. Since I know Rebecca also paints and draws I mentioned in the comments on her newsletter that I use similar “artificial constraint" methods for creativity but applied to visual art.

Long comment thread short I promised Rebecca that I would share my Dicey Art Game on my newsletter so here goes:

Game pieces: ordinary game dice plus 3 different lists. One list is of 6 ordinary objects I can see in real life. A second list is of 6 characters - in my case these are animals I like to draw. The last list is 6 actions that are related to the things I like, things that make me smile. Here are my current lists.

How I play: I roll 3 dice cubes - one roll of dice per category. The number on the dice matches with a number on each of my lists. That is a prompt which indicates what I draw and paint in my sketchbook.

In the example below I rolled a 2 for the Object category, a 3 for the Character category and a 1 for the Action category. The dice rolls correlate to Book, Rabbit, Reading. Then I asked myself “where is Rabbit reading a book?” so I rolled the dice for another object and got a 4 for a flower…

Here is a look at my finished sketchbook page.

Sometimes I include a 4th dice roll category that lists paint colors. That can prompt me to step outside my usual color combinations. But most often, as you see in the above photo, I just “pick 6” colors with white and black as wild card extra colors to tint and shade the 6 I picked.

Like what Rebecca wrote about in her newsletter my game is an artificial constraint style creativity game but this is one that I've tailored to my personal interests. You can tailor it to yours. My Dicey Art game was originally inspired by a game called Story Cubes but I wanted more animals and objects that I like than the Story Cubes game gave me so I came up with my lists plus regular dice version. The purpose of my game is to have a playful starting place for some fun drawing and painting even on those days when I can't think of what I want to draw. (My game also relates to the idea of research as a leisure activity² - of artwork as therapy.)

Periodically I update my game lists with different objects or animals. For example last year there were lots of pigs but this year there are more birds.

Sometimes I keep the game simple and use one dice for the object category and pick 6 colors. For this sketchbook page I rolled a 2 in the Object category and did just flowers, without the addition of character or action, using 6 colors.

Here's another drawing for which I rolled dice for each category, Object, Character, Action - and picked 6 colors. Can you guess what my dice rolls were?

If you guessed that I rolled a 4 for the Object, a 4 for the Character and a 2 for the Actions - you're correct!

Oh, I still use my SOCK questions³ as a creative prompt but sometimes an intelligence just wants to have fun.

If you play my Dicey Art game I hope you'll enjoy it!

Thank you, to all of you, for your ongoing patronage and support of my work! I appreciate every one of you! If you're a newly paid subscriber please feel free to download any or all of the 16 ebooks that I've written and illustrated which you can download and access anytime you wish from this index page.
Thank you again for being here!! 💚💚

1. 154. The liberation of constraint

2. research as leisure activity

3.