The art on the cover of the June 1, 2009 The New Yorker magazine was created by artist Jorge Colombo using a $4.99 app on his iPhone. The New York Times and countless iPhone sites reported on this over the long Memorial Day weekend, but the story is too cool for me to resist also mentioning it here. Here is the cover he created:
Jorge Colombo is a Portuguese-born artist who has lived in the U.S. since 1989 and who currently lives in New York City. He has worked as an illustrator, a graphics designer, a photographer, and more recently as a videographer creating a series of artistic digital shorts (many of which can be viewed here). A few months ago, he bought an iPhone and the Brushes app, a sophisticated drawing app that allows one to use any color, realistic brushes, and extreme zooming, making it possible to create beautiful artwork using nothing more than the iPhone. [UPDATE 5/28/09: The New York Times has an interesting follow-up article about the developer of Brushes, who notes that The New Yorker’s cover boosted his sales from 60-70 copies a day to 2,700 this past Monday, a total of around 40,000 copies to date.] Colombo created a number of New York street scenes, and he tells the Times that it is easy to paint using the iPhone because he doesn’t have to carry around pens, brushes and paper, plus he avoids the attention that typical artists attract; people just assume he is reading e-mails. Another advantage, which Colombo mentioned to the New Yorker, is that he can draw at night without needing a flashlight or a miner’s hat. Click here for a page on his website showing many of his fantastic New York street scenes (four of which are available for purchase on the 20×200 website). The New Yorker cover only took him about an hour to create while standing outside of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum on 42nd Street at Times Square.
A lot of people have created some great art using the Brushes app on their iPhone. Click here for a Flickr group where thousands of these pictures have been uploaded, many of which I rather enjoyed viewing, such as these: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. That last one was created by Steve Sprang, the author of Brushes.
One great feature of the Brushes app is that it records all of your actions when painting. You can then use the free Brushes Viewer program on a Mac to replay the creation of the painting. Click here to see a video on The New Yorker’s website which shows how the art on the cover was created, stroke by stroke. I often find myself looking at great art and wondering “how did he do that.” With this feature, you can actually see how the art was created — although frankly, instead of demystifying, the video only makes me more amazed at Colombo’s talent. And apparently The New Yorker agrees; not only is Colombo’s art on the current print magazine cover, but they decided to feature a new drawing by Colombo each week on newyorker.com.
Great art is great art regardless of the medium used to create it, but you have to admit that it is pretty cool that Jorge Colombo and others have created really great art just using an iPhone.
Click here to get Brushes ($4.99): 