Art

I reworked an older self-portrait that I made last year as a pixel art drawing, and turned it into an image on the Commodore 64. I like that the limited color palette doesn’t seem to limit me as much as it used to. It takes some effort (well, a lot of effort), but I think it was worth the time.
🎨 👨‍💻 🕹️ 👾

Here are some of the steps I took to create a multicolor pixel art drawing of a cat.

drawn in ibisPaint X in 4 colors

traced and redrawn in Pixaki

made into C64 runnable multicolor art with MultiPaint, loaded into VICE C64

It’s a process, taking many hours to complete. I think I’m improving.

👨‍💻🎨

I fired up my art app and sculpted on a canvas the size of a retro-computer’s text character (8 pixel wide and 8 pixels high). I had to struggle, because the app wanted it to look nicer than it really was.

I suppose you can already guess what it represents. You can do a lot in 64 bits of data 👨‍💻🎨

I would prefer owning a Mac, but I simply can’t rationalize the “Apple tax.” I used to be Mac or Die. A computer is more like a way to access the Internet nowadays, anyway 👨‍💻👾

It’s all very technical, this Commodore 64 multicolor mode. I made a special 2x1 grid in my iPad pixel editor to help me, but still I need to check in an actual multicolor editor if I made a mistake. Anyway, I’m improving as a C64 pixel artist, and that’s very cool 👨‍💻

Since I took the picture myself, I can copy it, I guess.

Creating something colorful that can be displayed on a Commodore 64 by loading and running a file involved a lot of (impossible to automate) creative steps. It took me around 4 hours for this simple drawing of my cat Aziz. 👨‍💻

I found an image editor that is able to draw Commodore 64 multicolor images. It can load PNG images, so I could draw on my iPad and color in this Java app on my Raspberry Pi-400. Yay!

I’m still learning, though. Also found a SID tracker to compose music on the C64, and my musical knowledge is meh.

Some kind of drawing, not quite pixel art, not quite traditional art. Yeah, limited time to draw today…

I drew something loosely based on a picture I took of my sister on Christmas day while we visited the royal palace Het Loo in the east of the Netherlands (I live in the west).

Here’s the process video in ibisPaint X (90 minutes drawing time).

The difference between how I think the world is, and how it appears to me couldn’t be further apart. I suppose this applies to most people. It is hope (or belief) that makes us see a better world. Too bad so few (including myself) act on that belief/hope in any substantial way to cross the gap.

It is said that Practice makes perfect, but I think it should be Passionate practice makes improvement. Being dispassionate and detached from the world is a good defense mechanism against a cruel world, but it does squat for making art. Hence, artists must suffer, from mostly indifference.

It amazes me how much can be done in one sitting, and yet how little it seems compared to what one can do in multiple sittings. However, much of the spontaneity is lost over the sittings.

AI is made of people…

I sometimes wonder why the world is the way it is. Then I realize it’s hard to change what has been developing over billions of years. The most one can do is tweak some things. Free will is an illusion, to keep humans sane and seemingly in control.

It turned out I was over-exhausted from all the running lately. After a restday it was much easier to draw.

Having paid for a year subscription for ibis Paint X didn’t make me want to draw more. After the free month was up, I struggled to draw daily. Maybe it’s the shortening of days making me gloomy.

Drawing without reference can take you only so far. I guess I use it from now on, yet without wholesale copying.

Oh my! Is it December already? How time flies when you’re being lazy.

I found a tutorial on drawing hands and wondered how it would help me to improve. Hence this naive drawing of a hand from imagination without studying fundamentals beforehand.

Just drawing what one sees won’t improve one’s skills, that’s for sure. Some deeper knowledge is needed.