Intro

I arrange tiny squares on a digital canvas to make images called pixel art. Mechanically simple, but infinitely deep in intent, the human element is what legitimizes the pixels as art. I, a human being, thrust my intention with every choice made on the canvas, in an attempt to ascend myself and any willing viewers above the mundane, into the realm of sublime. However, intention alone won’t raise us from the mire of our sufferings, as beauty must propel the transcendence. While beauty is arguably subjective, I believe it has a fundamental quality, which directs us toward the divine, serving the ultimate truth and goodness. Indeed, a staircase to heaven, made out of pixels.

Pardon my pretentious philosophizing to justify my simple act in this world, but it’s important to contemplate the purpose of art, and man’s essential role as creators. Especially in the face of surging A.I. technologies, I’m disheartened to realize how few people appreciate, or even know what art is, as the masses gleefully amuse themselves with machine generated slop. How far are we willing to go for the sake of convenience? I concede, I’m reliant on the computer to facilitate the creation of my pixel art, yet there is still a considerable degree of labor required to transform a blank canvas into a coherent image, and mental anguish with every countless step along the way. I believe toil serves the art, and justifies the intention.

If a machine could instantly pull an image from my head, in spite of my intention, much of the art would be lost. Like taking a facsimile of a frame from the mind’s eye of a dream, I suspect the image would exhibit a predominance of vague distortions with peculiar areas of uncanny detail. Curious fascinations, but likely lacking in my definition of beauty. Automatically beautifying the image would grant the machine liberty to fill in any gaps that would be patched along the creative journey of human handy work. Therefore, diminishing human intention, and artfulness, no matter how pretty the result may be in objective design.

I wasn’t sure where this was going when I started writing this intro. Apparently, I’m not a fan of A.I., particularly in the world of art. I’ve done my best to ignore it’s presence, as I have no interest in its use, or products. However, it’s rapid permeation in all aspects of life have put weight on my heart. While it’s hard for me to see outside net negative, dystopian implications, I hold hope that its disruptive force can serve to awaken people to desire truth. It’s not a destination, but a quest we must endeavor through with the constant aim of achieving a higher good. As a lowly man with great propensity to sin, I humbly serve the quest through my authentic art. Now that I got that out of my system, how about some tangible goods to back up the word salad.

Inspiration

While I’m inclined to imaginary subjects and game inspired styles, a growing portion of my portfolio exhibits realistic landscape studies. I’ve done a fair bit of traveling in my past, witnessing the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean, mist filled verdant valleys of the Indian countryside, and the perfect chaos of far eastern metropolises, among many other highlights. However, nothing stirs my soul quite like my ol’ muse; the spirit hovering above the Kansas prairie. Modest, and seemingly unremarkable to the passerby, she requires you to slow down, and commit to her modest vistas before revealing her true grandeur. If you wait for the golden hour, that’s when she dances and dazzles with her crowning spectacle across the entire sky. Sure, the sun rises and falls across the world, but I’ve observed every place has unique characteristics in the nuance of color, texture, shape, and scope. Maybe it’s just because I can actually see the sky on the sparse, flat landscape, but I find nothing as epically inspiring, yet spiritually calming, as the Kansas sky.

Process

The process starts with finding the right scene to motivate me. Lately, the beautiful fall evening dog walks have been urging me to return to the subject. After a couple weeks of the daily routine, and snapping many photos, I sorted out the best shots. Funny enough, I ended up most drawn to a sunset from late July. I never seem to be timely with seasonal events. Maybe I’ll make a fall scene by next spring.

While I draw inspiration from several photos, and my feelings from the moment, I ultimately choose one image to reenvision in my pixel style. My goal is to marry realism with a human painterly quality, to form an image that speaks beyond the photographic source.

The main key to maintain a painterly quality is to observe the reference off to the side of the canvas to simulate the open air scenario of transferring observation into mark making. I advise to not directly paint over the reference, as it tends to result in a paint by number process that ends up looking more like a poorly down scaled photo than handmade pixel art. In contrast, separating the reference from the canvas engages the minds eye in order to make the jump. The idea is to capture the essence of the photo, but not every little detail. I’m still learning to trust my vision, and embellish more abstractions rather than obsess over precision.

This is my first realism piece since I switched from Photoshop to Aseprite. The setup is familiar, with my work window on the left hand, and my reference to the right. However, I do miss the ability to float out multiple file tabs. This allowed me to keep my reference visible in PS, so I could easily eye drop colors on the fly. Aseprite allows multiple file tabs, but as far as I know, only one can be viewed at once. Therefore, when I want to sample a new color, I have to click on the tab with my reference, sample the color, then click back into my work tab, while I use a separate image viewing app for the reference off to the side.

Canvas size significantly impacts the level of abstraction. Naturally, the smaller the canvas, the more abstraction, while the bigger the canvas, the more accurate the details can be made. Subject matter and desired detail should be considered when choosing a size. I like to work on a relatively small size, as obvious chonky pixels lend themselves to an abstract painterly look. On the other hand, a large canvas can obscure the pixels, diminishing the aesthetic of the medium.

For this piece, I went with a 320x180px canvas, which is on the large end of my scale. This size allows me capture the intricate textures in the clouds, and convincing leafy quality in the trees, yet the pixel clusters are still apparent.

EDITING

I edit the reference photo before I start pixeling. Usually, I up the saturation and vibrancy a bit to juice up the color. Nothing too extreme, just enough to give the pixels some life without pushing into the surreal. A color boost will also help prevent the low res photo look. Color correction is also preemptively done to my reference, as I color sample directly from the photo to form the palette.

Another edit I typically do is cropping, and sometimes distorting the image for my desired composition. In this case, I only cropped a portion of the photo to achieve a 16:9 ratio. The original composition was quite nice, but I wanted a wider format, and the crop eliminated labour without losing the most interesting clouds. However, I do miss the radiant light shooting above the clouds. I played with squishing the image, but any amount of uneven scaling appeared unsightly. An interesting vertical format was also possible, but I had my heart set on a wide format.

The last edit I do is scale down the entire image to closer match the size of the canvas I’ll be working on. This pixelates the image, giving me a better view of how to translate things into my own clusters, and saves me from stressing over unnecessary details. I only do this to a certain extent, as its good to scale some details with the imagination for the sake of unique clustering. In this case, I matched the 320x180px size of my canvas, as it still retained ample detail for the imagination to further simplify in my clusters.

BLOBBING

The first phase of pixeling I call blobbing. In this phase, I use the pencil tool with large round settings to blob out all the main shapes of the composition. I capture a rough overview of the entire composition before refining any small details. Unless the canvas is tiny, I rarely use the single pixel pencil setting in this phase.

I also establish the color palette in this phase. I’ll grab a color from the area of the reference that I intend to paint, then I blob with that color as far as I can until it feels like I need a new color. I repeat this pattern, scanning across the canvas until the entire area is filled, and all the basic shapes are established.

CLEANING

Once the basic composition is established with blobbing, I take a much more thorough pass over everything, cleaning up stray pixels, and better defining the rough shapes. I still make many checks with the reference to inform my shape making decisions, but I focus more on the quality of the clusters on my canvas. Many clusters will arrive at there final form in this phase.

POLISHING

The final hyper focused pass over, where I analyze every pixel to make sure the colors and cluster relationships are optimally defined. I check for consistency of details, so the image feels wholistic without any areas that feel unfinished, or areas that are overworked with unnecessary, or out of place details. I also check for any unsightly jagged connections, or pillowed shading. I want to achieve an overall consistent style in my cluster use, and detail level.

Cluster style is largely defined by the size, repetition, and common characteristics. For example, observe the relation of similar wavy/swirly shapes in the distance clouds, or the repeated small circles in the nearer dark clouds, which gives them a consistent puffy feel. Furthermore, I chose to use very little dithering, which is mostly in the trees to convey shape without using extra colors. This captures a leafy texture, and enhances depth by distinguishing them in the foreground. I also avoided anti-aliasing, and made sure to weed out anywhere I dabbled, opting for creative clustering and smooth color ramps.

Final Thoughts

With a roadmap supplied by nature, there isn’t much conceptual creativity involved beyond the initial photo taking and editing. However, there is a lot of potential for expressive creativity in the execution of the clustering, and handling of colors. The main challenge in a piece like this is patience, and persistence. Things happen quick in the blobbing phase, but the cleaning and polishing take exponentially more time. Unless you record the process, it starts to feel like you’ve been in the same state for hours. Before I had much experience with realistic pieces like this, I was easily discouraged, to the point of abandoning a few pieces. But these days, I find zen in the focus on pure technique. I estimate this one took around 25 hours. Some may say it just looks like a photo, and I may as well had a machine generate it. If no discernment for my handmade clusters, I rebuke with the journey of my process, and the intentions in my heart.