A History of Creating in Space with 3D Drawing, 3D Sketching, and 3D Painting

While spatial computing has entered the mainstream with modern XR headsets, our community's pursuit of drawing, sketching, and painting in 3D space spans nearly three decades.

This is a chronological list of 3D drawing tools, exhibits, and related artifacts maintained by Daniel F. Keefe and ________. Thanks to our contributors. If you know of an additional example, submit it here!

System / Paper Event / Exhibition PhD Dissertation Major Project / Activity
2001
CavePainting System

CavePainting Research Paper

The "CavePainting" system is introduced at the IEEE Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics. As one of the first immersive stroke-based 3D authoring systems, it enabled artists to paint directly within a CAVE virtual reality environment.

PDF DOI YouTube
2007
Drawing on Air Dissertation

Dissertation at Brown University

Daniel F. Keefe publishes his dissertation: "Drawing on Air: A tangible interface for 3D drawing and annotation." This foundational research introduces tactile cues and physical metaphors to stabilize 3D brush strokes.

PDF Dissertation
2024
Drawing from Life Project

NSF Project: "Drawing from Life"

Macalester College and the University of Minnesota’s IV Lab launch the NSF-funded project, "Drawing from Life in Extended Reality," merging studio art with XR.

Project Page GitHub
Jan 2027
Dagstuhl Seminar

Dagstuhl Seminar

The international community unites at Dagstuhl Seminar 27022 to establish a unified research road map, formalize spatial curricula, and launch 3DDrawing.org as a global repository.

Event Page

Citing this Resource

@misc{3ddrawing2024,
  title={3D Drawing: A Community Hub},
  author={The 3D Drawing Community},
  howpublished={\url{https://3ddrawing.org}},
  year={2024},
}
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