Feeding the Fish, Lisbon, Portugal

I have now created drawings in countries all over the world, including cities in South America and Asia. This drawing, done in Lisbon, was the hottest one ever, with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). A protective plastic tent had been erected over it to give sun and nighttime protection, but the tent also acted as a greenhouse. As I knelt over the picture, sweat was literally dripping down onto my hands and chalks.

The original plan for this drawing had been that a model actress from a Portuguese TV soap opera would pose on the lily flower to promote a beauty product. But secretly, I always wanted to photograph it with my little daughter as the star. I like having children in my drawings. Apart from bringing innocence and childhood wonder to a piece, they help the sense of scale because they are small. By comparison they make a drawing seem big!

What I most enjoyed in this picture was drawing the fish broken and warped by the effect of the rippled water. I much prefer drawing things that allow freedom of movement as opposed to geometric exact things, which need calculation and leave no margin for error.

About the Artist:

JULIAN BEEVER, a master chalk artist, has delighted audiences in Europe, London and North America with his stunning three-dimensional anamorphic drawings. Anamorphic drawings are drawn in perspective and distorted so that the subject can only be viewed properly from one particular angle, and most convincingly through a camera lens. These drawings have delighted viewers for years because they appear so realistically three-dimensional when seen through a camera lens.

When the artist poses with the art, he appears to step right into the scene. Pavement Chalk Artist includes a fabulous selection of Beever’s most intriguing anamorphic drawings. The photographs record the development of his unusual skill and understanding of perspective. Each one is accompanied by a description that includes the techniques he used and challenges he overcame to produce original, inventive subjects in locations worldwide.

Who's painting who? Swindon, UK

This was an idea I had sketched out many years earlier but never had the occasion to carry out. My chance came when I was invited to the Brunel Swindon Shopping Centre in Swindon, UK, where they wanted a drawing for their art-themed celebration week. Presenting the Mona Lisa as if it was painted on a vertical facing wall below ground level was straightforward. I made a rectilinear grid over an image of the old masterpiece and recreated this grid on the floor, but with one big difference. This second grid was not a rectangle like the first but a trapezoid. That is to say, that all the lengthwise lines over the image were copied to make vertical lines on the floor, not in parallel but so as to converge off the picture at a point below (or just slightly behind) the viewing camera. On this grid I then plotted the outline and features of the Mona Lisa. More difficult was the hanging “artist” and his shadow on the sidewall. I got a friend to pose for this suspended in a harness and photographed him. In hindsight, I wonder if it would have been more effective if this figure, himself a painting, had been less complete.