Getting back to my GPS art “roots”

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Tree by GPS artist Stephen Lund in Victoria, BC, Canada GPS Garmin Strava art cyclist cycling creativity landscape art
Just a tree…though I’m sure it will prove to be one of my more ‘poplar’ works

Way back in the early days of my GPS artwork journey (that is, a little over four months ago),  I planned and rode each of my creations as one continuous line. No Garmin OFF/Garmin ON to connect the dots where the roads didn’t cooperate or to iron out unwanted lumps and unusual angles. I just worked within the confines of the city grid, for better or for worse.

So it was with GPS doodles like “wicked witch of the West Coast,” my Strava selfie and the sultry woman that I sketched at the request of a fellow cyclist.

And so it was with this simple tree, which I mapped out a couple months ago but only got around to riding today.

Without all the stopping and starting required for more detailed works, this one felt fast and free-wheelin’!

See it on Strava

On Her Majesty’s Strava-doodling Service

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II sketched with GPS by Stephen Lund in Victoria BC Canada Garmin GPS Strava art Strava doodles royalty
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Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II sketched with GPS by Stephen Lund in Victoria BC Canada Garmin GPS Strava art Strava doodles royalty
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Stephen Lund and his bicycle in Victoria, BC. All told, this likeness of Her Majesty required more than 85 kilometres of cycling.

A GPS portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second. Doodled by a loyal subject and citizen of the Commonwealth. On a bicycle built in the Commonwealth realms. In a city named for her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

And if that weren’t enough, I used Queens Avenue, Empress Avenue, Princess Avenue and Empire Street to sketch Her Majesty’s eyes and mouth.

Perhaps, Your Majesty, you might consider commissioning a GPS doodle, by me, for your next official portrait.

I am certain it would be the first official portrait of its kind…

See it on Strava

Doodle a Jedi, I must

Yoda – the Grand Master Jedi Knight from Star Wars – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art Yoda Jedi Grand Master Star Wars The Force
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Yoda – the Grand Master Jedi Knight from Star Wars – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art Yoda Jedi Grand Master Star Wars The Force
Today of all days, may the Force be with you (as you get on your bike and Stravadoodle)! My Strava Yoda has the Empire in his mind’s eye…and Empire Street in his left eye! 

Wasn’t it Yoda, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, who said “Doodle. Or doodle not. There is no try”?

Well, doodle I must. And on May the 4th, there’s little choice but to doodle the Jedi Order’s most disciplined master of the Force. Good ol’ Yoda.

May the 4th be with you!

If you’re eager to give Strava doodling a try, do. Start small. Experiment. Learn from your mistakes. And above all, as Yoda has been heard to say, “Patience you must have, my young Padawan.”

If you have questions, ask. For Yoda also said “Always pass on what you have learned”… which I’m very happy to do.

See it on Strava

Take a ride on the Dark Side

Darth Vader, the villain from Star Wars – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art Darth Vader Star Wars Dark Side
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Darth Vader, the villain from Star Wars – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art Darth Vader Star Wars Dark Side
“May the 4th be with you,” doodled two days early with Geoff W. – my first Strava-doodle “ride-along”

Earlier this week, one of my fellow Tripleshotters sent me an email:

Subject: ride along
I’d like to request one. Can you come up with a suitable topic? Vader and his young apprentice perhaps?

It sounded like fun – not just the Star Wars theme but the idea of having someone along for the ride.

Kudos to Geoff, who stuck with me for the entire 4.5+ hours with no inkling whatsoever about what we were doodling. He was completely in the dark (“on the Dark Side,” I suppose you could say) until he got home afterward and downloaded the ride to Strava.

Notably, the Dark Lord of the Sith is straddling Victoria’s Empire Street!

See it on Strava

Dragonslayer

Dragonslayer – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art dragon dragonslayer
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Dragonslayer – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art dragon dragonslayer
The broad strokes of this StravaArt scene – created with 125 km worth of pedalling around Victoria – were clearly visible within the map after I highlighted the city’s main roads

Okay – so maybe there’s slight historical disconnect between a guy decked out in gladiator garb (a fashion throwback to the last couple centuries BC) and a dragon, whose ilk didn’t start laying waste to European villages until a few centuries later. (Saint George of Lydda – immortalized in the myth of Saint George and the Dragon – was prancing around Asia Minor in the gear of a Roman soldier toward the end of the third century AD.)

Well, don’t blame the artist for any unfortunate anachronisms. Blame the folks who planned Victoria’s streets.

Like many of my Strava art pictures – including my Strava giraffe (see The Art of Giraffe Spotting) – the general shape for this one simply emerged from the map after I highlighted the city’s main streets. (See lower image at right). All I had to do was flesh out the details.

As an aside: St. George’s Day – an important Christian celebration in many countries – was just two days ago (April 23 – the day of his death in 303 AD.)

See it on Strava

One for the birthday girl

Happy birthday message and Strava art gift • Strava art and bike-writing by Stephen Lund on the streets of Victoria BC garmin gps cycling cyclist bicycle
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Happy birthday message and Strava art gift • Strava art and bike-writing by Stephen Lund on the streets of Victoria BC garmin gps cycling cyclist bicycle
I had to pedal 49 kilometres – 19 with my Garmin on, another 30 with my Garmin off – to wrap up this Strava art gift and birthday message for my lovely wife

It was my wife’s birthday on Monday. And much to her delight, she got the very thing every wife of a Strava doodler hopes to get for her birthday: a Strava doodle designed and pedalled just for her!

While the city grid was more or less cooperative for creating the vertical lines of the gift box and ribbons, the box’s diagonal edges required much pedalling here and there and back and forth to “connect the dots” – a technique I describe in my previous post. (The second ride pictured here – recorded on my iPhone Strava app – shows all that back and forth.)

All told, this Strava gift and happy birthday message called for 49 kilometres of cycling in Victoria’s downtown core and the neighbourhoods of Central Park, Fernwood and Jubilee .

See it on Strava

The miles on the other side of the artwork

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Enormous Tyrannosaurus rex behind the scenes mileage – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art T. rex dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex Strava art GPS art how-to tips and tricks
To create 40 kilometres of prehistoric Strava art, Strava doodler Stephen Lund actually had to cycle nearly 100 km. Pictured here is an iPhone Strava app recording of all the mileage that isn’t “captured” in the other image.

Some of my Strava art pieces are one continuous line from beginning to end. Others – like the T. rex I doodled this morning – require varying degrees of what I call “connecting the dots.”

Where the roads don’t go where my artistic ambitions need them to go, or when I’m determined to achieve a level of detail that simply isn’t possible on the city grid, I exploit the fact that when I stop my Garmin’s timer at point A and turn it back on at point B, I end up with a straight line connecting the two points.

It’s a handy trick, but it’s also time consuming. The ride is fitful with stopping and diligent map double-checking to make sure I’m hitting STOP and START at precisely the right spots.

And then there’s the added mileage. The recorded distance for my finished T. rex picture is 39.4 kilometres. But as you can see by the data on this image, I pedalled an additional 56.2 km connecting the dots for a grand total of nearly 100 km.

To create this “behind the scenes” picture, I simply cycled with two devices – my Garmin and my iPhone. Whenever I pressed STOP on my Garmin I pressed START on my iPhone Strava app and vice versa.

See it on Strava

Enormous T. rex has enormous hissy-fit at Oak Bay Marina

Enormous Tyrannosaurus rex – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art T. rex dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex Oak Bay Marina
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Enormous Tyrannosaurus rex – the handiwork of Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art T. rex dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex Oak Bay Marina
Good grief. Could someone please toss this pathetic creature a handful of herring?

Discriminatory food service was the apparent cause of a thunderous ruckus near the Oak Bay Marina on Saturday morning, when an enormous Tyrannosaurus rex threw an enormous temper-tantrum – all because of three plump seals and some frozen fish from the Marina gift shop .

Witnesses report that tourists had been feeding frozen herring to the spoiled harbour seals that bob like lazy fishing floats near Oak Bay Marina while T. rex stood by, begging pathetically with his useless forelimbs outstretched. But nobody flung any fish-bits his way, so Mr. T started roaring and hissing and kicking up an almighty fuss.

“King of the tyrant lizards” my butt. More like king of the panty-waisted crybabies.

NOTE: The T. rex in pictured here has had a little dental work. Due to a GPS and/or Garmin glitch, my ride as it appears on Strava is missing a number of teeth. I put them back in with Photoshop. What you see here is the route as planned and as ridden. Needless to say, Mr. T wasn’t the only creature in Oak Bay having a hissy fit today.

See it on Strava

Anglerfish blamed for Monday a.m. absences at YYJ high school

Strava art anglerfish near Oak Bay High School in Victoria BC • Strava art by Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art animals fish anglerfish Lophiiformes esca illicium
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Strava art anglerfish near Oak Bay High School in Victoria BC • Strava art by Strava artist Stephen Lund • Victoria BC Garmin GPS Strava art animals fish anglerfish Lophiiformes esca illicium
Oak Bay High students are being warned: “Stay away from the light! That dangly thing…it’s a trick, not a bag of Doritos.”

To explain a spike in unexcused absences among its student population this morning, administrators at Victoria’s Oak Bay High School are pointing fingers at a giant Strava art anglerfish seen lurking near the school grounds.

“It’s that fleshy growth at the end of its illicium,” says the school’s biology teacher. “Students are drawn to its luminescent glow like moths to a porch light. You’d think those enormous, terrifying teeth would be a clue that something’s amiss, but you know teenagers and their tendency to traipse obliviously into the gaping maw of peril.”

In their investigation of the truancy issue, Oak Bay Police have sought assistance from VicPD, whose police station, conveniently, is right in the belly of the beast.

See it on Strava