For r/SketchDaily: Puddy Cat and Pepe Le Pew as Romeo and Juliet in disguise. Game Boy pixel art 160 x 144 pixels, 4 colors. Animation frame used as a loose reference.

I am ze locksmith of love, no?

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Finishing up the sandwiches wasn’t really that big of a deal. I suppose that’s my subconscious at work. Still, I worked 7 hours on it in 3 sessions over roughly 17 hours. That’s 10 hours of subconscious internal deliberation. IOW, I slept over my art piece. Next time a bit less intensive, please!
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I drew the microscope from reference (no tracing) and the enlargement of the slide from imagination. I’m particularly proud of the 16 by 16 texture tile made more or less seamless. The microscope and its light and shadows are excellent too, for my usual execution of such objects.
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Instead of running a 26 km long run, I decided to do another sketch for r/SketchDaily. I was feeling somewhat tired and thought it wise to not overreach. The evildoer has won, I guess.
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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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🤨 Elon should’ve gone to eleven+), but it was already “taken”++), so X it’ll remain.

+) In reference to the 1984 movie Spinal Tap, where an amplifier is shown to go from 0 to 11.

++) In Roman numeral XI, and in hexadecimal B or decimal 11 (which both have been banned by default inside the com TLD) 🤓

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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I don’t drink, nor smoke, and according to this article by the National Cancer Institute,

individuals who do not drink alcohol should not start drinking for any reason.

and, for those who stop drinking,

The cancer risks eventually decline, although it may take years for the risks of cancer to return to those of never drinkers.

So I suppose I’m fine having been a teatotaller my whole life 😊

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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