Chicago Etch-A-Sketch Artist Re-Creates Art Institute Painting From 'Ferris Bueller'

Anyone familiar with the works of filmmaker John Hughes or Chicago movie trivia in general knows the famous scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Ferris, girlfriend Sloane and best buddy Cameron tour Chicago's Art Institute during the titular skip day, montaging their way through works by Rodin, Marc Chagall, Edward Hopper, Picasso and other artists in the museum's collection as the Dream Academy's instrumental cover of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" plays.

The scene winds down with Cameron transfixed in front of French painter Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte—1884, studying the detail in the painter's pointillism approach, a technique that uses colored paint dots instead of brushstrokes to create an image.

Pointillism is a time-consuming process for an artist, and it took Seurat two years to finish A Sunday Afternoon. So it's not a stretch to imagine that the painter might have some appreciation for the way Chicago artist Jane Labowitch recently re-imagined the post-Impressionist's most famous work in an equally slow and tedious medium.

She re-created it on an Etch A Sketch.

Labowitch, a self-proclaimed Etch A Sketch artist, recently posted a photo of her homage on Reddit under the screen name Pikajane (she also goes by princessetch on Instagram). According to her post, she took eight hours and four sittings at The Art Institute to render Seurat's masterpiece in gray and … darker gray using the late-20th century drawing toy and its crude, somewhat-difficult-to-master control knobs.

"My longest of the 4 sittings for this rendition was 2.5 hours," Labowitch wrote in the comments section. "My fingers and wrists were doing just fine, but my butt and back were a little unhappy since I sat on the floor that day."

She also explained why she did her Etch-A-Sketching at the institute instead of using an online image, running the risk of losing all her painstaking work if her tablet was jostled during her trips to and from the museum.

"[T]here's something special about being in the presence of the real thing," she wrote. "Plus it's really nice to get out of the office now and then and work in a different environment (esp the Art Institute)!"

As for the possibility of all those thin lines vanishing because of an errant nudge, Labowitch added: "As long as I keep the Etch A Sketch flat, the image will remain unscathed. I took the CTA to and from the Art Institute for all 4 sittings and didn't have to deal with any fading/erasing."

Other Reddit users complimented Labowitch's work, and a few, such as user Magnus PI, even put a Ferris Bueller spin to the re-creation:

There was some skepticism to Labowitch's claim her rendering was done entirely on the Etch a Sketch. One commenter brought up the possibility that the image was Photoshopped.

"As someone who has been working as a photo retoucher for about 3 years now, I can confirm that it would actually be more of a pain in the butt to make a legitimately convincing Etch A Sketch rendition via photo manipulation than it would be to just create something on an Etch A Sketch in the first place," Labowitch wrote, adding that people could go to her Instagram account to see other Etch A Sketch illustrations.

It's natural for challenges to the image's authenticity to arise given what an unforgiving and frustrating medium the Etch A Sketch can be. Why be an Etch A Sketch artist? For that answer, Labowitch pointed to a post on Deviant Art, showing an illustration of a circle she made on the tablet, a heady accomplishment for anyone who's tried this difficult feat of dexterity:

"Ever since we were children, we were taught what was possible and what was impossible. We were taught what we could and could not do. I'll never forget a landmark day in elementary school, where we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. BUT! Our teacher told us NOT to say sports star, movie star, artist or astronaut. How dare she limit our dreams? How dare she tell us what is and what isn't possible? If nobody dreamed of being a sports star, then THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY.

"Fast forward, 10 years later. "Jane, you shouldn't go to art school, perhaps you should find a career in math. You're good at that. Go to a university, find a safe career."

"I know, they were just trying to protect me. I know what I am getting myself into. I am well aware of the fact that I might become a starving artist. But I AM HAPPY.

"What do I want to be when I grow up? An ETCH A SKETCH ARTIST. And I am going to do everything in my power to make my dreams come true.

"I made this to show that the impossible IS possible, and with enough passion and dedication, you can do the impossible, too."

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