11/11/2009

Stephen Wiltshire drawing from memory

from designboom



Here you can follow the live creation of a drawing of the Manhattan Skyline by memory by british artist Stephen Wiltshire. Stephen Wiltshire is an artist who draws and paints detailed cityscapes. He has a particular talent for drawing lifelike, accurate representations of cities, sometimes after having only observed them briefly.
I don't really like the drawings stylewise, but it fascinates me that people with a photographic memory only need a brief view of a scene to render it accurately. Like having a build-in camera. Of course you need a double competence; one for memorizing and one for reproducing the memorized. It is the quality of this conversion which makes us call it art.. or not.