Creative explorations Vol #35: Gamify

A sketchbook/art journal prompt to support your art and creative practice.

Photo by Jennie Razumnaya on Unsplash

Creative Explorations are themed around a prompt that you can explore in your own art/creative practice over the coming weeks. Prompts will be sent out on the first Friday of every month. I hope this month’s prompt sparks your creativity!

I’ve been fully immersed in the FIFA World Cup this past month, cheering on my favorite teams, watching reels of the fan antics — how fun are the Tartan Army and the Viking row? — cheering the underdogs — Cabo Verde and their goalkeeper, Vozinha, who managed to hold Spain to a goalless draw, didn’t lose a single match in the group stage, and created history by advancing to the round of 32, where they meet last year’s defending champions, Argentina. It’s been exhilarating, to say the least!

And then there’s my new-found obsession with dice and gamifying almost everything — from tarot to journaling and goals. This month’s prompt is an extension of that spirit of play. It’s also slightly different from the previous months’ prompts, but I hope it will add an element of excitement, play, and experimentation to your creative practice. Because this month, we are going to GAMIFY our art/creative practice!

Resources + ideas

Here’s the part that’s different — instead of giving you suggestions for your sketchbook practice, as I do every month, I’m giving you a couple of ideas on how to gamify your art/creative practice. Your mission this month, if you choose to accept it {and don’t worry, it won’t self-destruct! ;-)}, will be to create a game that works for your practice!

Dice: Gamify your art practice by incorporating dice. A set of D&D dice will be good to have, though you can certainly use an online dice roller. For an example of how gamifying your art with dice can look, take a look at this post — there’s a simple dice-based art journaling game towards the end of the article. This month, I will expand on this idea for my own art practice, by incorporating a couple of different D&D dice. Exciting!

Decks: If dice aren’t your thing, you can create a deck of art journaling prompts. The good thing about making your own deck of prompts is that you can create prompts that support your personal practice, and also stretch you a bit if you’d like. You can start with as few as 10 or 15 prompts, and expand them as you go.

Pro tip: Look over your art journals and see the kinds of things you like to do and don’t do enough of. Look at the materials or techniques that you may have experimented with a few times and then forgotten to use/try again. Use the ideas you see in your own sketchbooks to create a nice mix of prompts for yourself.

Bingo: Make some art journal bingo cards! You can use this as a fun way to experiment with colors, themes, styles, or anything else that you can imagine. This could be a really fun one to share with a friend, too!

I think these ideas can easily be adapted for almost any creative practice, not just art. You could make a bingo card for photography, crotchet, or knitting, for example, or a deck of writing prompts or recipes, or incorporate dice as an idea generating tool into almost any creative practice.

If you do create a game for yourself, please share it with us in the comments! You can also drop me an email at shinjinim@substack.com, share them on Substack Notes, or drop me a DM or tag me on your Instagram posts @moderngypsy.in I would absolutely love to see the creative ideas you all come up with!

Like this prompt? Share it with your friends and invite them into our virtual studio. If you’re on the Substack app, you can tap on the like button or restack to Notes to let me know you enjoyed this post.