Quick Link to a Great Idea

This just in from Patrick Nugent, an inspiring union of drawing and digital projection.

Drawing Voyeurs Needed

From now until Friday, you can watch artist Stephen Wiltshire draw a 20' panorama of the New York City skyline while in residence at Pratt. Yeah, okay, you say - what's so interesting about that? Wiltshire carries a combination of autism and photographic memory - he does photorealistic renderings of cityscapes after seeing them for a short period of time. For this project, he was flown in a helicopter over NY for 20 minutes, enough time to lock the image in his mind, enabling him to render it in striking detail.

See the article and live webcast of the drawing-in-progress here.

Thanks, Jane!

Acquire FUKT

Well, it wouldn't be very polite to say 'Get' now, would it? Southern civility reigns. FUKT, the German contemporary drawing magazine, has just released its latest incarnation at the NY Art Book Fair earlier this month, and I gather that it is available at Printed Matter in Chelsea (yay for Printed Matter!!).

Featured artists include: Ante Timmermans, Charmaine Wheatley, Per Dybvig, Gert-Jan Akerboom, Heidi Linck, Jenny Mörtsell, Louise Hopkins, P. Nicolas Ledoux, Oskar Korsar, Stephen Marshall, Katja Eckert, Tina Jonsbu, William Powhida, and Björn Hegardt (ed).

See back issues and all other good info at http://www.fukt.de/index.html.

Prepare for SketchCrawl #25

Drawing communities are everywhere, and the web provides for instant visioning across the network. SketchCrawl is based in San Francisco, but has satellites around the world. For one day, every few months, members of the SketchCrawl network spend the day drawing, then post the evidence of time well-spent and a world well-seen. The groups range from couples to whole drawing mobs, and they are always looking for more members.

The next organized SketchCrawl day is November 21, 2009. If you are interested in joining up, go to their website to see if there is already a group forming in your town. If not, start one yourself - all instructions for doing so are on the FORUM section of their website:

http://www.sketchcrawl.com/

Drawing, the Social Discipline.

PS - I've organized one for Columbia, SC - go to the sketchcrawl website for more info!

Perfect Circles

Snipe Hunts and Freehand Circle Drawing Competitions (held in Vegas, annually) are both of enduring intrigue. The first time I heard of Pope Julius' request of young Michelangelo, I dedicated myself to mastering this performance of grace, with spotty success at best. Tonight, wonder was rekindled in the form of finding dozens of perfect circle drawers on YouTube. Starting with a math teacher from Ottowa who posted his circle (perfect!) in 2007, we are once again making the very best use of time and technology. A full page of circle vids can be found here, and the one that started it all is below. Circle on.

Blog on Blog Action

I think I mentioned before that it feels incestuous to blog about blogs, or at the very least a bit too navel-gazey, but a few decent illustration-related blogs have come into view in the past days, and I must share.

http://www.rocketfiction.com/ and http://www.scientificartist.blogspot.com/ (both by Paul Rivoche)
http://www.drawn.ca/ (swap meet)
http://www.linesandcolors.com/ (resources abound)
http://www.dailymonster.com/ (utterly and totally for fun)

There are enough links in the blogs above to keep one going for quite a nested run.

Resistance Drawing

I had the pleasure this week of being in a group drawing show with elin o'Hara slavick, an artist based out of UNC-Chapel Hill, whose series "Protesting Cartography" presents an expansive profile of the consequences of ongoing US military action at home and abroad. Slavick's artist talk further illumined the possibilities for drawing as a form of protest, be it quiet or screaming; many ideas from the talk can be found in the volume Bomb after Bomb, A Violent Cartography, which includes plates of her drawings, essays by Carol Mavor and Howard Zinn, and an in-depth interview with anthropolgist Catherine Lutz. Images of all the drawings can be seen here.

Working in a similar vein (and even a similar medium - gouache), artist Julie Weitz engages in terrorism-era social criticism via her abstract drawings of balaclavas. Reading the images of Weitz and slavick together offers a glimpse of powerful protest rendered through visually seductive drawings, both thoughtful aesthetic engagements with global issues.

Happy 10th Birthday, Big Draw!

This marks the 10th year for the Campaign for Drawing's month-long event known as the Big Draw. With over 1000 venues in play across the UK, the events encourage drawing as a part of daily creative practice. Drawing is defined in ways both generous and inclusive, and participation is welcome at all levels.

Full details and schedule are located here.