• Pixel art 🚧 What have I set myself up to for the Pixel Dailies challenge? This may take more hours than there are in a single day.
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    screenshot pixaki app on iPad with very rough W.I.P.
  • Today’s microβˆ™blog May challenge was “earth.” I tried to imagine how Shovel Knight would do a workout in his free time. He moves earth… with a shovel.
    πŸ‘Ύ πŸ“·πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    photo with small hill and a pixel art bare muscleman with a shovel in front of it
  • The theme for today’s Pixel Dailies was “split.” I loosely based my drawing on the James Bond character Oddjob.
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art man in torn up bowler hat with disc in his hand
  • The fourth day of the microβˆ™blog May challenge was hard, because I had too many solutions. People afraid of burglars can get in a thorny situation when people cutting their hands in a nightly climbing exercise sue the owners for damages, like cuts.
    πŸ‘Ύ πŸ“·πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    wall with glass sherds on top, pixel art ants marching on it
  • I bought some flowers for my garden and some to put on the sidewalk in front of my house. I’ve seen many in my neighborhood do that as well, to make up for a lack of front gardens. 🌺🌱

    flowers in a crateflowers in two plastic containers with earthflowers in garden

  • Today’s Pixel Dailies theme was isolated, and I chose Worf’s discommendation (from Star Trek NG s03e17 “Sins of the Father."
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–– πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art scene from star trek next gen
  • Microβˆ™blog May challenge, day 3, prompt “experimental.” This is an experimental flying carpet, clearly.
    πŸ‘Ύ πŸ˜ΈπŸ¦„πŸ“·πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    cat on cushion with magician in pixel art on its back
  • My entry for the MB May challenge, day 2, prompt “photo.” I imagine the cat complaining about being photographed without consent, yet again, sigh #mbmay

    cat meowing with caption PHOTO
  • My entry for the MB May challenge, day 1, prompt “switch.” The switch is connected to the lamp in the pixel drawing. #mbmay
    πŸ‘Ύ

    light switch with pixel art lamp
  • Pixel art. Today’s Pixel Dailies theme was “Treasure Hunter.”
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art treasure hunter egg stealer fox-like thingamabob
  • Pixel Dailies for 1 May 2022, theme “Treasure Guardian."
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art cat sleeping around treasure chest
  • Pixel Dailies for the month of April 2022

    I titled this month April Fool’s Month, to extend the first day of April to a whole month of pranks and fun. It was also the month Elon Musk tried to buy Twitter, with the premise that “free speech” would be his overall theme for changing the social media service.

    Like so many with me, I’ve weaned myself from Twitter (and Facebook). The only exceptions for me are the Pixel_Dailies account, and daily theme bot PD_Theme. Those accounts kept me there for my daily pixel art prompt. My reasoning was that if I want to improve my pixel art, I should do it more often. Spending many hours every day on pushing pixels in the Pixaki app on my regular (non-pro) iPad would certainly do that!

    Judging from the 30 pixel art drawings below, I think I reached a next skill level. More importantly, I kept at it. All too often with previous challenges I gave up, didn’t take it seriously anymore, because that it the easy way to deal with a challenge. In the past month I regularly had to give myself a talking to motivate myself to pick up the iPad and start drawing.

    pixel art for April Fool's Month 2022, days 1 thru 9
    pixel art for April Fool's Month 2022, days 10 thru 18
    pixel art for April Fool's Month 2022, days 19 thru 27
    pixel art for April Fool's Month 2022, days 28 thru 30

    If Twitter eventually changes into a place I no longer can identify with, there are other avenues for art prompts, specifically for pixel art. And if even that wouldn’t work, I can always go back to drawing with a pencil on paper.

    Now I’ve tasted a modicum of success, I want more!

    I also discovered why artists keep their intermediate steps to themselves. It spoils the surprise. Presentation is an important part of enjoying art, so the artist needs to make it as impactful as possible. I certainly am a novice when it comes to presenting my art.

    Then there’s learning the tricks of the trade, art as a skill, instead of a vision. As usual, there are many approaches, and not every approach suits every artist. However, the human vision system is as it is, and using it to the artist’s advantage is a basic ability every artist worth their efforts should apply to their art.

    Pixel art is limited by its small size, so placing pixels of the correct color in a meaningful pattern is rather important, if not crucial to the art form. It makes it highly suggestive and imaginative, and that is especially why it appeals to me. The tedium of likeness of more traditional art can bore the art maker so that they try to find stylistic shortcuts to avoid it, leaving out details the eye expects and can infer from what’s already there. Room for interpretation by the beholder is as old as the cave paintings of the Stone Age. Pixel art is no different in that respect. Still, there’s a lot to learn here for me.

    There are certainly art styles, personal and cultural preferences of how to implement an artistic vision, as I discovered, but I haven’t scratched the surface on those either. Since I couldn’t find much publicly available in writing about pixel art style specifically, I guess I have to use insights of art teachers and critics in other art disciplines. There certainly are lesson plans available, but those are mostly restricted to a (local) educational system behind a paywall.

    As is often claimed by experienced artists: “Art as a field is both wide and deep.” Even veterans in pixel art keep learning new things, improving their skills. It’s impossible to know everything and no longer improve as an artist.

    Ah, there’s no end to this, bliss!
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

  • Pixel art animation for the final day of April Fool’s Month 2022, using Pixel Dailies and the theme “Loop.” I could’ve gone allout, but decided to apply “think big, draw small."
    πŸ‘Ύ πŸ₯πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art ball rolling round and round on an infinite staircase.
  • Tomorrow the microβˆ™blog photo blogging challenge starts. I like to hide some extra info in the alt tag, accessible via right-click on desktop or voiceover on mobile devices. It’s both civil to a certain part of the readership that has low vision, and an easter egg for others.

    Photo of cat with pencil drawn vehicle with bird legs
  • Pixel art 🚧 It’s the ultimate day of April Fool’s Month. I was inspired to draw one of the Terminators in the border. Will it be a dystopian future of abandonment, or will I start a new chapter in my artistic journey? Only time will tell…
    πŸ‘Ύ πŸŽ­πŸ˜‰πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art with terminator and still empty canvas
  • Pixel art for Pixel Dailies on the penultimate day of April Fool’s Month, themed “paperweight.” I searched for Ghibli cat and got among others a plushy, which I used as reference.
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ₯πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art cute cat on stack of paper
  • Pixel art for Pixel Dailies on the 28th day of April Fool’s Month, using the theme “dive.” I went for a cartoon duck diving into a swimming pool, because silliness? Anyway, loads of fun making this one .
    πŸ‘ΎπŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art animation of cartoon duck diving into swimming pool
  • While writing about this month’s art challenge, seeing all those pixel paintings (still 3 to come!) makes quite some impression on me. How I live from day to day, hardly look back. Journaling certainly gives perspective. No nostalgia, though. The best is still to come, after all!

  • Had to use the Wayback Machine, but next month I’ll have been blogging for 23 years, see here. Back then it was pure HTML by hand.

    Also notice “Tips for happy downloaders” at the bottom. I started this project in early 1998.

  • Pixel art. Today is the 27th day of April Fool’s Month and the Pixel Dailies theme was “skewer.” It’s Kuroko Shirai from the Anime series “A Certain Scientific Railgun”, a 13 year old level 4 teleport master, who can teleport those spikes into baddies.
    πŸ‘Ύ πŸ₯πŸ–₯πŸ‘¨β€πŸŽ¨πŸŽ¨

    pixel art Shirai with her spikes