Artist destroys hand, mind by drawing for 24 hours straight without lifting his pen

Perhaps taking note of all us cretins who spent our high school math classes drawing ever-expanding spirals in our notebooks, a professional artist has just completed the more constructive, less grade-endangering version of a classic doodle by drawing a single line for 24 entire hours.

The artist in question, Brady Dollyhigh, has uploaded a time-lapse video of the marathon illustration (there’s also 8 1/2 hours of real-time footage available if you’ve got nothing on the schedule today), which was documented by photographer/editor McKinley Benson. Apparently concerned that he’d be tempted to, say, lift his hand for more than a millisecond at any one time, Dollyhigh’s entire drawing consists of one line stretched into a ton of different scenes across a giant sheet of paper. There are buildings, landscapes, human figures, and, most tellingly, words that say things like “I am no longer sane,” “These 3 hours r gonna last,” and “REFRESH REFRESH REFRESH.” Each little bit of the illustration is a snapshot of how someone’s mind struggles to persevere through a patience- and body-destroying task while associating freely between concepts.

Before the video begins, Dollyhigh shows himself preparing for the process. We see him buy a plastic urinal thing as well as some of those truck-stop energy shots and a box of Clif Bars. He also displays the method used to swap pens when one of them runs out of ink without having to stop the drawing. Five hours in, Dollyhigh’s asked how he’s doing and he says he’s “just trying to take my time, save my brain, [and] keep drawing.” At 16 hours, he says, half-jokingly, that he’s “feeling nothing” but that he also feels “pretty good.”

Once he finishes, Dollyhigh looks over his work, eyes slightly glazed over, and says, “Wow, what a day.” That seems to be putting it pretty lightly.

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