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On Sundays in São Paulo, an aging roadway called the Elevado Costa e Silva is closed to traffic and used as pedestrian walking path. Artist and photographer, Felipe Morozini “got 30 people including 8 photographers, 4 video makers and 30kg of chalk to draw 75 flowers on the asphalt in 15 minutes to produce a documentary.”

While the drawings are simple, the interaction between these flowers, the roadway, the city, the people and cars is spectacular. Makes us want to draws nuns and flowers today.

(via www.streetsblog.org)

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When illustrating, it’s great to have reference photos either for realism, authenticity or just to help formulate an idea, and for some time now, the Library of Congress has been uploading their very useful, fun and interesting photos to flickr. You may wonder who or what exactly the the Library is or contains, so we’ll just let them explain it themselves:

We serve as the national library for the United States, based in Washington, DC. With more than 142 million items preserved on some 650 miles of bookshelves, we’re also the world’s largest library.

In addition to books, we have photos, maps, databases, movies, sound recordings, sheet music, manuscripts, and information in many other formats. Millions of items are online, and the full array of collections is available in DC, right across from the U.S. Capitol building

The archive is a treasure trove of imagery, and very easy to lose a few hours searching through for inspiration, reference, or good old fashioned procrastination. Below are a few photos to whet your appetite.

Anyone up for a game of pushball?

• Library of Congress on Flickr
• Library of Congress Website

Flickr: Henry “hi” Myers, Brooklyn nl (baseball)
[1913]

Flickr: New York female Giants (baseball)
[1913]

Flickr: “Hattie” the elephant and Bill Snyder
[no date recorded on caption card]

Flickr: Edw. Lauterbach
[no date recorded on caption card]

Flickr: Pushball scrimmage, Columbia
[between 1910 and 1915]