“Girl With Pearl Earring” ballpoint drawing for BIC
An agency working for Bic recently contacted me about contributing something to their Challenge Bic campaign. Basically a study by Reading University concluded that the ink in one Bic ballpoint can do 9431 signatures or 232 pages of A4, they wanted me to do a drawing using one pen. We chose to recreate Vermeer’s painting from 1666.
This was pretty tough for me as I was on a tight deadline, had to film the whole process, and the only image I had of the painting was a print out from an image I found online… On top of this I quickly realized that Vermeer’s painting is in fact in poor condition. The surface is badly cracked (click on below image) - so I needed to, in a way, restore it whilst recreating it.
I had to keep very quiet whilst doing this as any leak could compromise Bics idea. Any way, it went well and you can win yourself 10 pounds if you can finish yours… LOL.
You can also win one of the limited edition prints of the drawing.
See Bic’s promo video showing me creating the artwork after the image below.
The story was quickly picked up by national papers. It even appeared on the front page of The Telegraph online site for a while. Eventually the story was in London’s Metro newspaper, Telegraph online, Express online, and The Sun online (see below). It also got a mention on Radio 1 (soundclip link coming soon). I even heard that the big man at BIC Mr. Bic gave it a nod of approval which was great to hear.
Tags: artist, bic, challenge, James Mylne, vermeer