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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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.
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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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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.
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This one of 32 by 32 pixels took me several hours and two iterations to complete.
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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?
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I suppose it’s good to try being creative…
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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.🏃‍♂️

On my run this afternoon I saw a guy in winter clothing and mittens, while it’s 31℃ (88℉) in the shade 🫢 I thought myself being odd for running in hot weather, but, apparently, I didn’t even scratch the surface of strange 🤡 human behavior.

I looked into doing multiple marathons within a year. The best advice I found was:

• plan the marathon races far in advance, so you know what you’re up to
• concentrate on post-marathon recovery, especially the first week after a marathon (mostly non-running related activities: walk, cycle, swim)

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Yesterday I ran a 22 km race as part of a 32 km training session.

Around 8 o’clock in the morning I jogged 9 km, took a shower, dressed in my race outfit, drank a cup of coffee, grabbed my race gear, and jogged the kilometer between where I live and the track and field club, where the start of the Brabantse Wal Marathon was at 10:45 AM. I did the half marathon event, which actually was 22 km (900 m longer than the half of the 42,195 m marathon distance).

The course was mostly off-road, with some steep short climbs and stretches of loose sand, which I had practiced in the past couple of weeks. In the first kilometer there was a single track, and with 270 runners we got stuck now and then, as you would expect. After the field was more spread apart, single tracks were no longer a problem.

I kept a steady pace, though slower than usual, because of the 10 km pre-race jogging. While I struggled to keep from falling, the inevitable fall happened, giving me bruises on my left shoulder and knee. I couldn’t see that tree root on the heavily shaded path. It didn’t slow me down much (like a few seconds).

In the last five kilometers I ran on familiar territory and could pick up pace. The last 1600 m on the road I could pick up even more speed, sprinting in the last 300 m on the track towards the finish line.

The time wasn’t that impressive. But I hadn’t expected that anyway, because of the added distance, and because of the off-road bits that were rather challenging. The 32 km I did in less than 3 hours and 20 minutes I was proud of, especially because of the low average heart rate under warm conditions (21℃). Corrected for temperature (into a result with 8℃), this would have resulted in a 1 hour 50 minutes for a half marathon road race.

Now I will take a few days to recover with easy training. Next Sunday will be my next long run, 29 km at a more leisurely pace.

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