Ed fairburn

With the invent of GPS technology and map applications, paper maps are waning in use - but they are an essential material to English artist Ed Fairburn, who uses them as the canvas of his detailed portraits. Fairburn's work is an imaginative incorporation of the human form and topography. He's used maps of places from all over the world. The winding layouts of streets and rivers are enhanced to form wrinkles, veins, and other features of his subjects' faces.

above: Windermere, Pencil on a cropped map of the English Lakes – specifically Lake Windermere. Cardiff-based illustrator Ed Fairburn sees things in maps most of us do not. His map-based portraits combine the art of cartography with the drawing of the human face. Making the curves and lines of the two dimensional terrain (or the heavens as is the case with his celestial drawings) blend with the curves and lines of human features brings a dimensionality to both the maps and the portraits. The…

For my project I need to find relevant street maps and recreate them in a interesting, artistic way. It should depict how visitors see and experience the areas. Conventional maps can be very grey a…

British artist Ed Fairburn creates amazing hand-drawn portraits using old road maps and charts as his canvases.

Ed Fairburn has an uncanny ability to make visual connections with various map elements and human facial features.