Self-portrait [noun]: a portrait of oneself, made by oneself
This week’s image comes to us from Carl Wells, aka @djfriendlyman on Instagram, who explains how it came to be created…
There’s no better excuse for a cycling adventure than a birthday! As well as regularly biking to work, I race for Team Webscope and normally ride around 12 hours a week on my Giant TCR, with a training plan from Grit Coaching.
What would be a bit of fun and totally different than my usual training rides? Strava-art! Strava is a popular app for cyclists which tracks your route with GPS. So the challenge is to design a route which, when uploaded, looks awesome.
My first step was to print out a map of Auckland and just look around for some inspiration. I had no idea what I wanted to create. But soon I noticed the central city cyclepaths create a ‘head’ of sorts – the Lightpath, Quay St, and Grafton Gully.
Drawing the figure was lots of fun – and riding it was fun as well, aside from the rush hour traffic. The route sent my friends and me on a very unusual ride – climbing stairs to get through the University of Auckland Faculty of Education in effort to keep the ‘leg’ as straight as possible, a slightly questionable diversion in Newmarket to complete the ‘thumbs up’, and endless out-and-backs in the central city to make the hair. Was a good laugh!
You can see Carl’s original Strava self-portrait here and on his team’s Instagram page – and compare it with another self-portrait of the artist below 🙂
