Hasta La Ideas

That soft-focus street scene on the cover of The New Yorker‘s June 1 issue? It’s Jorge Colombo‘s “Finger Painting,” finger-drawn on his iPhone using the Brushes application. Colombo, a New York-based artist and designer, created the “iSketch” while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square, according to a post on the magazine’s blog. “I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” Colombo tells TNY. “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” Another advantage of iSketching recalls the methods of Ben Shahn, who rather sneakily fitted his Leica with an angle finder to minimize self-consciousness in the subjects of his street photography. Colombo can draw discreetly on his iPhone, as passersby assume he is checking his e-mail. Watch the below video to see how he created the cover image.