Artists Google Doodle on Self-Driving Cars

If you’re like me, one of the first things you look forward to seeing when you log onto your computer is the Google Doodle for that day. Google Doodles are used to commemorate holidays, notable events and famous people—and now, local artists are using them to celebrate their communities as part of Google’s Paint the Town contest for its Self-Driving Car Project. As it is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Google invited artists living in California to design artwork that appears on the driver’s side door of Google’s self-driving vehicles. Here are just a few of those Google Doodle designs: Artist Hong Li, who resides in Mountain View, created a Google Doodle that captured his love of the great outdoors. The great weather and parks in Mountain View are epitomized by his image of silhouetted children climbing a single monkey bar across a blue sky with a verdant park scene below them. Li’s simple yet effective piece makes one yearn to enjoy the great Mountain View weather alongside them. Kate Thompson lives in San Francisco, where she is an artist for Creativity Explored, a non-profit organization that supports artists with developmental disabilities. Her Google Doodle is a continuation of her artistic interest in scenes of daily life within her community. Those who view Thompson’s piece can’t help but drawn into the intriguing scene she depicts, as well as wonder about the individual and collective narratives of her characters. Shalan Erits is an artist from Sunnyvale who also works as a mechanical engineer. This helps to explain the technically precise nature of her Google Doodle, which depicts the San Francisco skyline with the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Ertis’s piece counterpoises the creative and technical aspects of her community, thus creating an image that benefits from a unification of both approaches. The above Google Doodles from Li, Thompson and Ertis were three of the 10 winners (along with two honorable mentions) of the Paint the Town contest. While this project was initially limited to artists in California, it’s already proven to be such a success that a similar one has already been announced for the Austin, TX area, with potentially more cities to come. All of the Google Doodle entries are definitely worth checking out, and I would encourage you to do so on the Google Self-Driving Car Project page. Main Image: Google (naturally)