Meet @drawnyourtweet, an Anonymous Artist Cleverly Illustrating Tweets at Random
Over the years, Twitter has created its own form of celebrity: the masked crusader who bestows little gifts of on-point satire or brilliantly photoshopped images to the online public. The latest addition to that crowd is @drawnyourtweet, a Twitter account that mines Twitter for inspiring 140-character tweets, draws them and sends them along to their authors.
The anonymous England-based account ballooned in popularity on Sunday, when @drawnyourtweet sketched a tweet about a Jesus-loving Octopus for Helen Lewis, deputy editor at the British magazine the New Statesman. Lewis retweeted it. Within two days, @drawnyourtweet’s following grew from 150 people to over 16,000. Though this concept isn’t entirely novel, it’s caught on like never before.
So where did this charitable hero come from? We reached out to DYT, as they call themselves, to discuss their mysterious identity, how they pick which tweet to draw, and what they do for their day job.
Yahoo Tech: Why did you decide to keep your Twitter account and Tumblr anonymous?
Drawn Your Tweet: I want DYT to be all about the drawings and less about the person behind the pen.
Are you an artist by trade?
No. Not sure whether I’d class these drawings as “art.” I’m only doing one or two drawings a day (I’ve got a full-time job). That’s my limit for now, though I’d like to start doing more in the future.
Still, the drawings are very wry and well done. How long does each one usually take?
It takes about 20 minutes(ish) to do each drawing. Though it can take much longer actually finding a tweet I want to draw!
What do you look for in a tweet? It must be hard to pick just one thread of conversation from all of Twitter.
Well, I search Twitter and will start (randomly) looking at what my followers are tweeting. It’s a time-consuming process — so much more than doing the drawings. There’s no real method to this, but I can guarantee that at some point I’ll stumble across a tweet that will make a good drawing. Obviously it helps to start with an amusing tweet in the first place. Makes my job easier!
What inspired you to start this project? Did you just wake up one day and say, “I want to be Twitter’s artsy Batman?”
I just thought it would be an interesting experiment. I like the idea of just some “random” person getting a drawing of their tweet. It’s a bit of fun and hopefully puts a smile on their face. I suppose @drawnyourtweet is the anti-troll of Twitter!
Check out some of @drawnyourtweet’s work below.
From Monday morning:
One that most of us can relate to:
We’ve all been there …
Follow @drawnyourtweet on Twitter for a chance to see your 140 characters turned into art. In the meantime, I’ll be constructing a bat signal for Twitterverse art emergencies.
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