Potential Strava art pictures “pop” from the map when you highlight main thoroughfares and long connecting streets. In images 2 and 3, the general shape for Stephen Lund’s Strava giraffe clearly emerge.

Yesterday’s giraffe was a topic of much discussion over pre-ride coffee with my cycling club this morning.

One fella said, “What – you just decided you wanted to draw a giraffe and then you sat down with a map and figured out the route?”

In some cases, that’s my approach: conceive the idea and then manufacture the route. But in the giraffe’s case, it was a matter more of discovery than creation.

In an earlier post about my Strava art process, I showed you the Photoshop map I use to plan my pictures (1). A few weeks ago I created a new layer with all of the city’s main roads highlighted (2)…and potential pictures started popping off the page!

The sequence…