"To walk down the street with him is just a reminder that, no matter how boring you think the day is, there are always interesting things around you."

"If you think of just a walk to the corner as an opportunity to see something different, most of us don’t do that normally. He is just this super-voracious observer of everything."

Said Jen Bekman, an online art curator, quoted in "Jason Polan, an artist who set out to draw every person in New York, has died at 37" (WaPo)(Polan died of cancer).

Bekman said the idea for drawing every person in New York grew from the MoMa project [in which he drew every piece of art in the Museum of Modern Art]. The drawings were done in haste on small pads of paper with a Uni-Ball Vision Elite pen, capturing New Yorkers in only a few minutes or seconds as they completed some quotidian activity: commuting, reading, sitting. He gave himself one rule: “I only draw the person while I can see them,” as he explained in his book introduction.

The result meant that some people didn’t have hands or legs. Some had blank faces floating on white paper — like “Edward Norton at Lafayette” — as they whizzed past Polan mid-drawing or disappeared through the subway doors.

I bought the book "Every Person in New York." I love stuff like this, and have engaged in this kind of drawing project myself. My favorite example of this genre, and my favorite art book of all time is "Get Me a Table Without Flies, Harry."

ADDED: I love that we're told the pen — Uni-Ball Vision Elite pen. You can get 12 of those things for $26. We're not told the brand of sketchbook. Maybe something like this. You could carry a 6"x4" pad in your pocket and a Uni-Ball pen and always be looking for things to draw. Think about why you would do that instead of just taking photos of anything that interests you. It makes a big difference! It makes you something more like a "super-voracious observer of everything."

ALSO: Polan put his drawings on a Blogspot blog, here, from 2008 until the end of last year. From his description in the sidebar: "I am trying to draw every person in New York. I will be drawing people everyday and posting as frequently as I can.... If I do draw you, you will see yourself (or rather, a drawing that hopefully somewhat resembles you) on this blog that evening. When the project is completed we will all have a get together." That last sentence takes on new meaning.