Over the past couple of weeks I’ve become fascinated by Drawball, an ever changing online community art space. The image above shows how it looked on 23 Dec 2006 when I first started exploring it. Since then I’ve become so preoccupied collecting interesting drawings from the world of Drawball (and adding one of my own) that unpacking my main art collection is on hold for the moment.
It may look chaotic from this distance, but Drawball is full of hidden wonders and intriguing phenomena. It’s teeming with all kinds of creative life and destructive forces too. The remarkable thing is how masses of people can, and will, draw together despite the conflicts.
Over the coming days I’ll be sharing my findings with you – and be warned, some of it I’m going to call art.
8 Comments
hi, i’m a writing an article for a student newpaper on drawball.com,. and i stumbled on this blog. i was wondering if i could as you a few questions.
most importantly, do you know who the creator/owner of drawball.com is, and, if so, how can i contact him?
how did you find drawball.com?
what is your stance on graffiti in the real world? legitamate art, or just destruction of property?
answers to any or all of these questions would be greatly apprectiated,
nf45
falebclack@hotmail.com
hi nf45
Unfortunately I don’t know who the creator/owner of drawball.com is. I’d be interested to find out too.
The previous post Drawball: from Chaos to Community tells of how I came across drawball.
What do I think of graffiti in the real world? It entirely depends on context and content. It can be art – e.g. the brilliant Banksy – but legitimate? What is legitimate art anyway? Who legitimises art? Isn’t legitimate graffiti art an oxymoron? The definition of graffiti is that it’s illicit, which is one of the reasons why I don’t consider drawball to be graffiti art. To me it’s a communal drawing space. But there are many similarities with graffiti art, e.g. good drawings can be drawn over – check out Banksy’s Kissing Policemen.
Graffiti rarely destroys property – although it may, I suppose, be so inflamatory that in some contexts it incites people to attack a building. Graffiti alters the appearance of property, and it can change its value.
thanks for the reply. i was also wondering if you knew anything about this recent drawball crisis. It seems that there’s some kind of gang war between [H], VIP, and /B/. sometime yesterday, a person named “thingymongler” left hundreds of photos of mutilated human corpses all over the drawballfans.com message board, effectively disabling the message boards. If you could shed any insight at on this whole mess it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again,
nf45
helo i like drawball. i drew a cool picture but i think those darn /b/ people wiped it out. they are so destructive.
i like australia
dan
its the drawing above jesica albas head and next to the mushroom. its a box man
drawball.com/4qa2j7k-1174694865 i found the link. isnt my box man cool. i had to browse history to find the un grafitied version
how do you get more ink????
you have to spend some time and a lot of ink on doing a good drawing. you’re drawing skills don’t have to be great (mine aren’t), but your commitment to the drawing does.