🌞   🌛
Rene van Belzen

  • While sketching this kitten I wondered how I could do away with all those lines. So I tried to eliminate as much as I dared. I’m sure more could be removed still. However, now the result was pretty “bland.” I suppose color has to do the brunt of the work, and there is too little of that.
    🎨🐱

    drawing of stylized kitten with as few lines as possible Animated GIF of drawing process

  • I find it always such a surprise how a pixel art drawing I made subtly (or sometimes radically) changes to conform to the rigors of the C64 multicolor bitmap.

    Other than that, I used some of the edging techniques (sharp, lost and soft edges). So there’s that too. Happy 😊 camper here!
    🎨👽👨‍💻🕹️👾

    Commodore 64 multipaint drawing of an anime version of Rick Deccard

  • I was listening to a podcast about Blade Runner (1982), which inspired me to draw Rick Deckard, as played by Harrison Ford. Took me 1½ hours.

    drawing in anime style of Rick Deckard

  • Searching on Flickr for Creative Commons photos of kittens I found this cute black and white one. I used it as reference for my C64 hi-res bitmap pixel art drawing.

    Sometimes less color is better. Especially if the one depicted is staring into your soul.
    🎨👨‍💻👾🕹️🐱😈

    Commodore 64 hi-res pixel art drawing of a black and white kitten

  • I didn’t get to experiment with edges. Still, I drew something I love, so that’s good.

    Maybe advice from an oil painter doesn’t translate all that well to pixel art. Pixel art has more in common with decorative art (like embroidery) than with traditional art you can hang on a wall.
    🎨🐱👨‍💻🕹️👾

    Commodore 64 multipaint illustration of two kittens, one sniffing a flower

  • Sometimes (read: often) I get distracted by an interesting bit of art-making fundamentals, try to apply it, then get totally side-stepped by the intracies of drawing from a cute photo, forgetting what I wanted to try out in the first place. The creative process never seems to go in a straight line.
    🎨

    rough sketch in blue line of two kittens

  • Public domain now?
    🎨👨‍💻🕹️👾

    Commodore 64 multicolor illustration of a cartoon mouse holding a piece of cheese and a drink animated GIF of drawing process

  • It is said all dogs go to the Good Place.

    Drawn in ibisPaint X on 9th gen iPad with first gen Apple Pencil.
    🐶🎨

    Illustration of a winged dog with halo on green surface

  • For this piece of pixel art I called upon my knowledge of the Period Table of Elements for illustrating the Pixel Dailies prompt for January 12, 2024, “Golden.”

    Commodore 64 multicolor illustration, showing an elderly mansplaining the prompt Golden

  • I suppose the lesson to be learned here is:

    Don’t look into the spiral, or you’ll go cuckoo, bananas, Dada

    A quick peek is no problem, though.
    🎨👨‍💻🕹️👾

    Commodore 64 hires bitmap image showing a spiral and a confused artist

  • Another day, another cat drawing. This time our more blocky version of a feline fellow creature. Sketch in ibisPaint X and final drawing in Commodore 64 multicolor bitmap (160 x 200 resolution, 16 colors). If I could, I’d knit him a cozy sweater.
    🐱🎨👨‍💻🕹️👾

    illustration of a stylized cat with chunk in blocked letters written underneath Commodore 64 multicolor bitmap image of a chunky cat illustration

  • It’s always good to have a firm mental picture of one’s (artistic) process, as to not get bogged down by the details. I’ve updated the C64 multicolor illustration I did yesterday, and separated it into 4 “colors”:

    • background color 0 (white)
    • ditto 1 (black)
    • ditto 2 (red)
    • other colors
    updated Commodore 64 multicolor illustration of Boys Will Be Boys animated GIF showing the color layers of the illustration

  • I had a few lock up with my iPad lately. Now it’s even in recovery mode, trying to restore from iCloud…

    Update: I’m back on the iPad. Pfew!

  • I think I’m starting to grasp how to draw in C64 multicolor. You get three colors that can be used anywhere, and per 8 by 8 pixels block you get to pick another color out of 16 possible colors. Careful placement of the pixels is key. If you do it right, you can have a very colorful image
    🎨👨‍💻🕹️👾

    cheeky multicolor illustration on the Commodore 64, stating that boys will be boys

  • Just for kicks, I tried to color a random doodle I made. I had to redraw some of it to be able to work around the limitations of multicolor bitmap graphics on the Commodore 64. Other than that, and that it takes a lot of time, it went well.

    silly and random multicolor image on the Commodore 64

  • Another day, another cat drawing for the old Commodore 64
    😻 🎨 👨‍💻 🕹️ 👾

    Commodore 64 multicolor drawing of a blue cat on a red background

  • I reworked an older self-portrait that I made last year as a pixel art drawing, and turned it into an image on the Commodore 64. I like that the limited color palette doesn’t seem to limit me as much as it used to. It takes some effort (well, a lot of effort), but I think it was worth the time.
    🎨 👨‍💻 🕹️ 👾

    Commodore 64 multicolor selfie

  • Here are some of the steps I took to create a multicolor pixel art drawing of a cat.

    grayscale image of a cat drawn in ibisPaint X

    drawn in ibisPaint X in 4 colors

    colored pixel art of the same cat in Pixaki

    traced and redrawn in Pixaki

    colored pixel art of the cat display in VICE C64

    made into C64 runnable multicolor art with MultiPaint, loaded into VICE C64

    It’s a process, taking many hours to complete. I think I’m improving.

    👨‍💻🎨

  • Making room for two text screens, so I can use them for buffering is great, but running it from C64 Basic is one ugly hack, and slow too. But I’ve done it, which is great, since I learned a lot from it, and that was the whole point here. The code I keep, in case I need (some of) it 👨‍💻

    screenshot of Commodore 64 Basic code in VS Code

  • Flipped 📷

    Buildings reflected in frozen puddle of water, grass on top of the picture