After every drawing I make there's at least one person who asks how I did it, which does make sense in the grand scheme of things; these drawings aren't a particularly common thing to see. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself making the drawings so far, so hopefully by outlining my journey you will want to try it out for yourself!
COVID-19 of course got me running more consistently (like it did for many) but the runs were getting boring so I started looking for tasks to do. Northbridge has laneways scattered everywhere so one task for myself was to run all the laneways whilst trying not to cross my own path. It took a fair bit of planning and I think I hit most, if not all of them. I also realised I really enjoyed this planning part.
Following that I was trying to match my sister’s
pace on another run, but after getting home and uploading to Strava as per usual, a head shape jumped out at me from the map. There was an eye, ear or horn, a lower jaw and curved parts that could be mistaken for teeth (if only whilst squinting).
"...a head shape jumped out at me from the map."
I don't think I had heard of Strava Art beforehand, I just thought it would be another fun task turn the essence of a shape into an actual drawing, especially since it would involve planning (and also used up some of the considerable time I had on my hands). Castlecrag, where the bulk of the head would be, has loads of curved streets and two in particular are nearly concentric. The perfect place for an eye! To complete the rest I realised I couldn't just use roads or the eye would be inside the mouth, and whilst I didn't expect it to be realistic I had to draw the line (ha!) somewhere. Luckily there was a handy bush track that connected Castlecrag to Northbridge and provided just enough room to pass below the eye and complete the mouth. Here's how it turned out:
It was supposed to be the head of a dragon blowing a bit of smoke out of its nose (where the "60 m" is on the map), and it kinda sorta looks like that. Looking at it now in comparison, it is very basic, but I was very proud of it. Still am actually! For a first attempt the only real "mistake" was the extra line at the furthest bottom-right. Upon completion I discovered the best part of the entire process. Not the designing, not even run itself. It was after ending the run on my watch and waiting for it to save, then starting to think "Have I done it? Did it work!?" It uploads, it opens, it worked! SATISFACTION!
And with that, a random task turned into an enjoyable, somewhat regular pastime! What happened next? How did the drawings go from considerably abstract animal parts to full creatures with (mostly) correct proportions? Read on for more.
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