I don’t put myself above tracing to better understand what I’m drawing. It’s a shortcut used by artists since the invention of the camera obscura, and known to be popular around the second half of the 16th century. It’s like with cheat sheets in school; not needed if you’ve written enough of them.
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Not caring so much about the final result doesn’t always bring greatness, but it brings results which may turn out to be great, or at least descent. Art is as much about the making as it is about showing what you made. Artists, great or not, ship.
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I remember The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as a great spy series from the early 1960’s, starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as American Napoleon Solo and Russian Illya Kuryakin. So I drew Solo in pixel art from reference. I haven’t seen it in ages, so I don’t know if it holds up to today’s standards.
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It is sometimes said that practice makes perfect, but a better saying is that practice brings improvement. This is even without a conscience effort—i.e. an art self-critique—to improve. In pixel art readability is always an issue, as with any stylized art. It often relies on shape and contrast.
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The funny thing is how much you need to compromise your art to keep a likeness if your canvas is only 32 by 32 pixels. Still, it IS possible to cram a whole scene into it, if you put your mind to it and squint a lot. I’ll be so happy once I’m able to do that.
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Another pixel portrait, building on some of the art fundamentals I refreshed recently, and really need to do more of to continue. Still using the 16 bit art nouveau palette, which I like a lot. More in the alt description.
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This is still a crude study of a master painting by a 19th century animal painter under the pseudonym “Raphael Olaria”, which I partially painted over with pixel art (256 x 173) on my iPad with a limited color palette called “16 color art nouveau."
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I suppose one has to start somewhere. My animal drawing is still lacking, especially of those long-haired breeds. Still, I gave it my best attempt. Maybe I need to study some master paintings.
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This one of 32 by 32 pixels took me several hours and two iterations to complete.
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More creativity, I suppose?
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I suppose it’s good to try being creative…
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Seat

The red and blue chair, designed by Gerrit Rietveld between 1919 and 1922. It was an attempt to make good minimalist furniture available to the masses. It was priced in 1923 at ƒ15 (± €126 nowadays). Professionally made replicas retail for €1500 and up.
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Silly idea in pixel art 🎨 for a Strava profile pic. I won’t be using it, though.
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Aside from the clear spelling error.

More experimenting. I made a frame of 120 x 108 mm on paper in my notebook and sketched a fox from a photo reference with ballpoint pen. Next I scanned it and tried to create a pixel art outline, which I filled with flat colors. 🎨 It’s too many steps to feel “easy to do."
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So perhaps I should do some urban sketching with a notebook and a pen. Here’s two sketches of my two Bengal cats in low-low resolution (16x16) 🎨🐱Perhaps the resolution should be more like 64x64 pixels for better recognizability, or even higher, 160x144. So more experiments…
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So swordtember turned out to be a big failure. It seems I’m really bad at routine and habit forming. Nevertheless, I turned to Reddit gets Drawn, and drew this woman 🎨 No idea if I can keep this up. I haven’t posted it on Reddit, because I don’t like it myself, so why would she?
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This month I’m doing swordtember. Number 1 is the longsword, done as pixel art
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I like the design esthetics of this pixel art drawing I made in August. After being burnt out from self-challenges earlier this year, maybe I should pick up my Apple Pencil again, and join one of the many online suggestions for artistic self-challenges, only more selective this time. If a criterium (draw every day) becomes a target, it loses its usefulness
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Another reason for me to avoid challenges, or, at least, put a strict limit on the number of challenges. I can really break down mentally. Ah well, we do what we can, don’t we? I’m happy I caught it and acted appropriately. No more challenges for a couple of months for me.
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Micro∙blog May challenge day 11, “maroon.” Marooned with a tricylce on a maroon colored brick wall.
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