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Stephen Wiltshire draws a Mexico City panorama from memory

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British architectural artist Stephen Wiltshire can remember and draw the skyline of an entire city after flying over it in a helicopter. In this October 2016 video, he travels to Mexico City, tours it from above and below, and then draws it from memory in a sketched cityscape over the course of five days. He has been called the Human Camera. From his site:

Drawing street life and modern architecture have been Stephen’s passions for as long as he can remember. His amazing talent is even more incredible considering that he was diagnosed with autism when he was three years old. Stephen, who was born in London in 1974, was completely mute as a small child, and found it hard to relate to other people.

At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School, London, where it soon became apparent that he communicated through the language of drawing. His teachers encouraged him to speak by temporarily taking away his art materials; eventually he uttered his first words – “paper” and “pencil” (just like Picasso) – but didn’t learn to speak fully until the age of nine.

Drawing was Stephen’s passion and he was seldom to be found without pen and paper: animals, London buses, cityscapes and classic American cars were all sketched with increasing maturity as the years went by.

Wiltshire was honored with a MBE for services to the art world in 2006, and has been commissioned by clients all over the world to draw panoramas of Tokyo, New York City, Houston, Rome, Hong Kong, Dubai, Jerusalem, Singapore, and more. His gallery is located in London’s Royal Opera Arcade.

Next: Artist Stephen Wiltshire draws New York City from memory.

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