Pixel art

Despite Reddit being on the fritz, there are still active communities. We artists need challenges to improve, or to just maintain our skill level, even if it means to do the unthinkable (read: surf Reddit with a web browser).
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In about six days I added two more 32 by 32 pixels portraits. These still take about an hour a piece, and I don’t see one minute for a portrait in my future. We will see how things develop, speed-painting wise. I can see progress, though. My pixels aren’t as random as before. That’s good, I think.
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Inspired by a famous British boy-band from the 1960s, I drew this character on a stage, using only four colors at a small screen size (GameBoy portable videogame player from the early 1990s). It wouldn’t be a playable character (96 pixels size), which had to wait until the late 1990s, early 2000s.
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Pixel art portrait from a photo.

The dithering looks wonky, but that’s just inexperience on my part. I need more practice on the drawing fundamentals, specifically for pixel art. Still, it’s the best I could do in a 24 hour period since my previous sketch. So I’m happy 😊
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I wonder… If there would’ve been a descent sketching app on the GameBoy, would I’ve been able to sketch like this? Ah well, it’s a challenge nonetheless, and I hope to get “good” enough to post on there. I’m competing with 4-color pixel art against pencil and paper, after all.
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I drew this on May 11, 2021 on r/SketchDaily, with prompt Quail Quilting Quorum. Too bad Reddit has gone to hell in a hand-basket in the meanwhile, similar to Twitter, now X. I remember drawing the upper left quail from reference and the rest from imagination, based on the reference.
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An attempt at isometric perspective and texture tiling in pixel art. This doesn’t come easy, and requires more practice than a day, obviously.
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MapCrunch.com pixel art shrunken to a tiny scale and only five colors.
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Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall…
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Now I know what to expect, it’s time to tackle some subjects, like this flower, and how to render blurriness with a limited color palette. Let’s say it’s an experiment 😊 Yes, let’s. I’m sure in a year’s time it will look “painfully newbie-ish” to future-me. Until then, I’m happy with the result.
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After more of the tutorial, it’s clear to me that to keep the art interesting, you need to be inventive in every piece, much like in engineering. This is also the case with traditional art, but far less so. Ever pixel piece is practice to learn new techniques, try out new ideas.
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Self-portrait.
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At first I wanted to do one 32x32 pixels portrait per minute, but that turned out to be one per hour. Doing one of these per day shows me how I’m slowly improving my art skills over the days. There’s a lot of zooming in and out, squinting, and cringing over old art involved, as there should be.
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This weekend a pixel art tutorial by former DeviantArtist kiwinuptuo about lines and shading. I plan to extend it with floor shadow and with different drawing techniques. We see how far I’ll get. It’s rather sophisticated, so I’ll take my time. What I won’t do—yet—is texture, nor patterning.
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Call me ignorant for never having heard of Robert Henri before @thatkruegergirl mentioned him in a quote.
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There couldn’t be more opposite movies in cinemas, while two strikes are going on in Hollywood over streaming residuals and a ban on AI script writing. It all is in our heads, in our heads.
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The tv show Mannix was made in the late 1960’s, starring Mike Connors, with theme music by Lalo Schriffin (who also wrote the original Mission Impossible theme, and still composes and performs music at age 91). I traced a screenshot, which isn’t as straigthforward as you would hope at that size.
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For some a promise is just a bunch of words to keep the masses busy with their silly expectations.
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I used to think that the ALT attribute is a kind of image description. Yes it is, but only machine-readable (i.e. for screen readers). For sighted humans, you can use the TITLE attribute or the FIGCAPTION tag, in addition to the ALT attribute. Right-click or long-press to reveal.
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Good gracious me, it’s more like 60 minutes than 60 seconds. I have no idea how artists are able to draw so fast. I get lost in details as soon as I pick up a stylus to draw, and forget about any time limit.
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