Daily Archives:July 23rd, 2009

The finger is mightier than the brush

Quentin Stafford-Fraser by Simon FraserMy brother Simon is an artist. Well, he’s a doctor, actually, but the two are not mutually exclusive, and he studied art up to A-level.

A couple of nights ago he and I were playing with the now-famous Brushes app on the iPhone/iTouch. I tried to draw a picture of him, he drew one of me. Suffice it to say that my one of him is not worthy to be reproduced even in this humble journal. His one of me, on the other hand, is really rather good. I am, of course, pictured looking down at my iPhone…

What particularly impresses me about this is that Simon had very limited experience with Brushes beforehand, and hadn’t discovered that you could zoom in and out. So this is done almost entirely at 1:1 scale on an iTouch screen with a blunt finger.

It may not be too flattering, but I really like it. Perhaps it’s appropriate that the first portrait anybody has created of me should have been drawn on an iPod.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser