A Swedish artist, Erik Nordenankar, recently made more that a few waves by claiming to have drawn the biggest picture in the world, a portrait of himself constructed of a single line 110 thousand km long.

Nordenanker said his amazing drawing had been sketched out, not in ink or paint, but by the movements of a special briefcase fitted with a GPS tracker. This case, he claimed, had been given to DHL along with a precise itinerary detailing the exact coordinates the package was to be taken to. Once it had completed its world-spanning round-trip, Nordenanker simply downloaded the route from the device’s memory and set about publicising his achievement.

http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx

However, according to The Daily Telegraph, the Swede’s only achievement may have been to fool a small number of people for a short period of time, as doubts raised almost simultaneously with the claim seem to have been vindicated:

[quote author=“Telegraph”]‘Biggest drawing in world’ revealed as hoax

A Swedish artist who claimed to have drawn the biggest picture in the world using a GPS device stuffed inside a briefcase has been exposed as a hoaxer. Erik Nordenankar’s self-portrait – which straddles the entire globe – was allegedly created by tracing the route taken by the specially-primed case on its 55-day journey around the world. The artist claimed he gave the case to DHL, the package delivery firm, with exact co-ordinates detailing the stages of its tour. [...] But after bloggers pointed out holes in Nordenankar’s claim, DHL confirmed to the Telegraph that the artwork was an “entirely fictional project”. A spokeswoman said they had allowed him to film in their Stockholm warehouse as part of a college project, on the understanding that the work went no further than his art school. The GPS package was never sent around the world. DHL now intends to contact Nordenankar to get him to clarify the origins of his work on his website.

As “evidence” of his achievement he had posted the picture, delivery instructions, two photos of his GPS suitcase and a photo of a wad of DHL delivery notes. He also made two YouTube videos, one showing him sketching the route onto a world map, and the other allegedly showing the briefcase at various stages of its journey. But since releasing the drawing and details of his project earlier this month, bloggers were quick to accuse him of pushing a hoax.

Many pointed out that DHL delivery planes would have been highly unlikely to make the tight loops in the North Atlantic that form the hair of the self-portrait. Others noted that many of the package’s mid-route stops appear to be in the middle of the ocean.

“[He] could have at least centered the drawing over the land areas, so it would be more believable that DHL had made stops there, as opposed to a DHL plane making loop-the-loops out over the Atlantic,” a reader called Shinanigans posted on the Neatorama blog.

[More here…]

I don’t know what’s worse, that he hoaxed it, or that it doesn’t even look like him.

I don’t think it would count anyway
All he would have at the end would be a print out
Besides which he wouldn’t have done the legwork
and the courier whoever they were would be the real
artist.

I’d have been less skeptical if the ‘detail’ bits like hair an whatnot were centered over a major landmass like north america or russia, where the package could be shipped point-to-point with more control and without a need to have a boat or plain doing spirals and squiggles over open water. It would just be a LOT of efforf and expense for a ‘drawing’.

Hah!  It didn’t fool me!!!

Of course, I hadn’t even heard of it before it was posted here as a hoax.  But that’s beside the point.

OMFG IT’S JESUS!!!1!

Yeah, it was rather silly of him to have the delivery people supposedly out in the middle of the ocean flying or sailing around in loops.