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.
👾

I suppose rate limiting Twitter users to 10,000 tweets per day for verified users, 1000 for existing unverified, and 500 for new unverified users, will force people to do something with all that free time. Might I suggest paying attention to that stranger across the dinner table, aka spouse?

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.
👾

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.
👾

Art used to be an opportunity for self-reflection, art for art’s sake. With mechanical reproduction, art became a commodity, entertainment. With these immersive exhibitions and AI generative art, even the original is nullified. It’s entertainment for entertainment’s sake.

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.
👾

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.
👾

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.
👾

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."
👾

Here’s some simple fan art animation inspired by Leo Laport’s This Week in Tech show I made 14 years ago, and which still makes me jump for joy when I see it.

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.
👾

This one of 32 by 32 pixels took me several hours and two iterations to complete.
👾

Creating portraits in pixel art reminds how important it is to be mindful while making art, not to just follow a recipe or rely on what you’ve done before. Each artwork has to be intuitive at first, then more contemplative as you continue. Then take a break, and start again, using one’s intuition.

More creativity, I suppose?
👾

I suppose it’s good to try being creative…
👾

My resting heart rate reached an all-time low of 42 beats per minute. Soon I’ll have to disable the low heart alarm on my watch, which has an (odd) lowest setting of 40 bpm. Mind you, I’m still overweight, quite a lot, so that resting heart rate is bound to drop a few bpm in the coming months. ❤️

Yesterday I ran a 10 km “race” in the heat of the day (30℃, 86℉), which is quite hot for traditional Dutch summers (though becoming norm with climate change). I wanted to run a half marathon, and was prepared with a cooling vest, but, apparently, this is a novelty, and I a fool to expect a race 🏃‍♂️

I now have a temporary free premium account with Strava, and am even less impressed than with Garmin Connect. Unless you like to flaunt with made up statistics to get some clout within the runner community, I don’t see any point in paying for a premium account.

24 marathons across 24 European countries in 2 months. This guy is just crazy, but in a nice way. He almost died during his first marathon from exposure, separated from his team (words were spoken, improvements discussed). See this YT video.

Today’s long run was (from the start) a bit of a bad run (see my result on Strava). It wasn’t so much the temperature, but the fact I wasn’t recovered (enough) from last Sunday’s intensive long run of 32 km. I had to walk the last 6 km. Better luck next time, in three weeks.🏃‍♂️