Do you want to go on a bike ride, make some awesome art, and maybe even win some prizes while you do it? If so, join us in our Strava Art competition during virtual bike month. During the month of May, go out and create a piece of GPS art and send it in for a chance to win!
For a chance to win, please send your submission to map@oaksandspokes.com or tag us on twitter with @OaksandSpokes.
The prizes are:
Best Piece of Art (as voted on by the board): $25 Gift Card to your favorite bike shop, as well as either an Oaks & Spokes water bottle or t-shirt.
Random Drawings (x2): Two people that submit pieces of art will be randomly selected for their choice of one of the following:
- Oaks & Spokes T-Shirt
- Oaks & Spokes Water Bottle
- $10 Gift Card to their favorite bike shop
Unless otherwise noted, submission to the competition will allow Oaks & Spokes to use the submitted image(s) for promotional purposes. The winner of the Best Piece of Art will not be eligible for the random drawings.
Tips for creating Bike GPS Art (Strava Art)
I had never made a piece of Strava art before this, so I was excited to give it a try! I was at first worried that it would be extremely difficult and time consuming, but it turns out that with only 10-ish miles of biking and a couple hours of planning I was able to make something I was happy with. Here are a couple tips from my experience creating my very first piece of GPS Art:
- Get Inspired! Check out some of the great work other people have done on places like https://www.strav.art/.
- Look over a map. Just look around and see if anything catches your eye. For me, it was the loop around NCSU’s Centennial campus that looked an awful lot like a turtle shell, so I took it from there.
- Don’t worry if the roads aren’t perfect. You don’t need to follow a road for the entire piece of art, that restriction would limit complex pieces to only the strongest riders willing to spend an entire day biking around. Instead make use of trails and sidewalks to flesh out your piece.
- Straight lines through buildings? If there is a building, hedge or anything else in the way of a line you need drawn, there is one more trick. Pause your tracker at the start of the line, bike around the long way, then resume it at the other end of the line. For most GPS tracking software it will put a straight line between these two points.
- Plan out your route beforehand. You want to make sure and go out with a plan, I spent more time planning my route than actually riding. Use some sort of software to plan out your route beforehand, or just plain old paper. The tools I used are https://gribrouillon.fr/ for just drawing on a map, and Strava Route Builder which will both follow roads and allows for a manual mode. This was nice as it followed roads for me, then I could switch it to manual mode to go through impassible terrain in a straight line (for when I would pause my tracker and bike to the next point another way).
- GPS Tracking Software. Get something with which to record your ride. I used Strava, but there are many other options such as Wahoo Fitness or Map My Ride. Just make sure whatever you use allows you to pause & resume to create a straight line, or just to review your next step.
- Make sure you have a reference. Most pieces will be fairly complex, especially once you are out riding your bike. Make sure you have a way to reference the design while you are out.
- Go and do it! Go out and ride the route. Make sure and go slow and reference what you have done often, as it is easy to overshoot or go the wrong way. When I was out riding I made sure to double check everything I was doing, as going the wrong way could end up in having to re-do the whole thing.
- Be Considerate. Creating GPS art in the best of times requires being considerate of other road, trail, and sidewalk users. You are trying to move in ways that are sometimes unexpected. Please be patient, and make sure and maintain social distancing.
After hours of planning and one very nice day for a bike ride, I was able to create this basic turtle :). I was very pleased with how it turned out, and I enjoyed the whole process of making it. Hopefully you will be able to go out for a nice bike ride and make some cool art in the process.