Modern art is often awesome.

This weekend I popped in to The Royal Academy of Arts in London and wandered into a small, two-room exhibition which examined the work of modern painter Stephen Farthing, who I'd never heard of. It had some of his paintings then showed the sketches which became them. One whole wall showed Farthing's sketches of classic paintings (Hopper, Rembrandt etc) done with a number of differently coloured lines, and at the end of the wall was a collation of all of these into a tube-map like sketch in which each line was *ahem* a line and each painting was a station, with all the relevant interchanges and intersections. After doing a bit more research, it turns out he's done this sort of thing before. On his site I found his 'definition of drawing' in much the same fashion and was again blown away. I can't put my finger precisely on why but the idea of explaining abstract concepts through maps and practical functions really appeals to me. Probably because I was given The Great Bear as a present when I was quite young. Anyway, here is the 'definition of drawing', which you can also view in better quality if you click the link and go to his website (and download the PDF), which also explains a lot about his pretty impressive body of work. If you're ever in central London drop in to the RA and check it out. It's not free though, so obviously I don't want you to waste your money. There's a lot of free art galleries in London. In fact it's one of the main reasons the city is great. So get on it!