The largest GPS drawings ever: records, and how they were made

GPS drawing is older than Strava. The first pieces were made with handheld receivers in the early 2000s, and the records since then have been set on foot, on bicycles and, once, from aeroplanes. Here is what the record books and Wikipedia's article on the form actually say, and what the big drawings have in common.

The biggest

"Marry Me" — 7,163.7 km, Japan. The Japanese artist Yassan travelled a route covering most of Japan so that the track spelled out a proposal. It is the largest GPS drawing made on the ground, and the reason "Marry me" is still the most searched Strava art idea.

"PEACE on Earth" — 60,794.07 km, the globe, 2015. Yassan again, this time by aeroplane: a track around the entire planet spelling the words. Larger by distance, made without a single step, and a reminder that a GPS drawing is a track, not a workout.

Largest by bicycle. Set by a father and daughter, and used to raise €26,000 for charity according to the article. The distance is not given there; the point of it was the ride together.

Record-winning images listed for the form include a heart, a Latin cross and a velociraptor. The cross was 983 miles, ridden by an American cyclist in 2023. The velociraptor was drawn on Strava in March 2023.

The artists

Jeremy Wood drew a fish 13 miles wide and spiders with 21-mile legs, and is one of the people the form is named after. Hugh Pryor worked with him and wrote the software that turned GPX files into images before anyone else was doing it. WallyGPX had made over 500 pieces of GPS art by bicycle in Baltimore by 2018 — the most prolific body of work in the form. Every December the Christmas rides across London, and the portraits run through San Francisco, go round again; they are the pieces that made Strava art a genre rather than a stunt.

What the big ones have in common

• A plan measured in strokes, not kilometres. The Japan proposal is two words. The cross is four strokes. Scale comes from the size of the strokes, not from adding more.
• Straight lines where the ground allows them. The best drawings use long roads for long strokes and put the pen lifts where a straight line hides.
• A surface that fits the picture. A grid city for letters; a coast or a river for a snake or a whale; the whole of Japan for a sentence.
• Somebody kept the file. A record is a track, and a track is a file. The drawings that are still looked at are the ones that were exported and drawn again, not the ones that lived on a screen.

Yours

Nobody's first drawing is 7,000 km. A heart around the neighbourhood is 4 km and one closed line, and the mechanics are the same: how to make Strava art, ideas by distance. When it works, export the GPX and put the shape on paper — one clean line, no map — with a Strava art print.