Wednesday 18 May 2011

Around The World In 6 Clicks

A couple of weeks ago I started a new painting project, basically to help get me back into the practice of regular painting.

I'm calling the project "Around The World In 6 Clicks", and through the use of Google Maps I'm going on a virtual painting tour of the world.

Working process:
- From the Google Maps homepage I zoom-out until the whole world is visible;
- I close my eyes before click-and-holding my mouse cursor anywhere over the map and vividly moving the mouse around in order to spin the map to a random location;
- I release the mouse button before again vividly moving the cursor around the screen (so that it finishes over a new random map location);
- Once I've stopped moving the mouse I use the scroll-wheel of my mouse to zoom-in as far as possible and pin-point a painting location;
- Finally I select the orange Google Streetview man and move him over the exact location that I ended-up at in order to get a photo of that location, which I proceed to paint in my sketchbook.

It's been an interesting journey so far, and I've even learnt a few things about some of the locations after doing research on them (out of curiosity)!

You can check out the first 5 paintings on my facebook art page by clicking here. (The series won't be limited to 6 paintings as the title may suggest - 6 is actually the number of clicks it usually takes to arrive at the source photos).

2 comments:

  1. Interesting project. I was surprised you ended up with landscapes so far. So is the photo you are sketching from, the view you get from what you see after you have gone to streetview or after you have done the research on the area?

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  2. The photos are what I get from the Streetview man; although not from Streetview itself...
    When you drag the streetview man over the map it often brings up blue lines over roads/paths to show where streetview is available and also blue dots to show where uploaded user photos of that location are available.

    So far all my random locations have been near the coast or in the middle of nowhere - where Streetview is not usually available - so the paintings are based on uploaded user photos of that location (or the photo that is nearest that location).

    Research has mainly been used just to learn about Mount Shikotan, because from the map I was unsure if it was part of Russia or Japan, and I therefore wanted to learn more about it.

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