Where Can Finger Painting Really Take You?

By Lido Vizzutti, 10-30-09

For those young and young at heart, where can finger painting really take you? Well, throw in iPhone technology and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Times Square as a muse, if you're artist Jorge Colombo, it can get you to the cover of The New Yorker.

Colombo, who was first published in The New Yorker in 1994, has been using the application "Brushes" on his iPhone to create original artwork, which has not only been published on the cover of the magazine, but also in a weekly blog on newyorker.com. Using the companion application "Brushes Viewer" we get to see each step of how Colombo composes the picture.

The original post from May 25, 2009, on the Web site says this:

Colombo’s phone drawing is very much in the tradition of a certain kind of New Yorker cover, and he doesn’t see the fact that it’s a virtual finger painting as such a big deal. “Imagine twenty years ago, writing about these people who are sending these letters on their computer.” But watching the video playback has made him aware that how he draws a picture can tell a story, and he’s hoping to build suspense as he builds up layers of color and shape.

Here's the video from that first post. Visit newyorker.com to see more of his work and check back weekly to see the updates.

[End of article]