Retro Vibes: How I Kept the 80s and 90s Alive Through Pixel Art

Bing AI

Hello, my dear reader, I warmly welcome you to my blog.

If you’re a regular follower, you already know that here we cover various topics, most of them interesting. Today, I’m going to discuss a topic that says effort equals results.

For this occasion, I want to share something very personal and valuable to me, and of course, it’s about my passion for everything retro, especially from the 80s and 90s, because those were precisely the years when I lived my best times—the era of arcades, music, and that whole atmosphere fills me with nostalgia, and it’s something I deeply appreciate.

I decided that the best way to represent and keep that era alive was to do something, to dedicate myself to an activity related to it, so I decided to acquire a new skill: the skill of drawing in pixel art.

This was truly a great adventure.

Comparing what I started doing at the beginning, it doesn’t even come close to what I do now.

I remember exactly how, at first, I made doodles and figures that made no sense.

In fact, here I’m going to share one of my first works.

Albirodonte

Here you can see what I initially called the Albirodonte, in honor of the person who was teaching me to take my first steps in pixel art, my mentor and tutor, whom I deeply appreciate, @albiro2050. And this was the first figure I made.

Bing AI

As you can see, it’s a kind of alien with completely wrong proportions and hundreds and hundreds of pixel art mistakes.

There’s no shading in the image, it’s completely disproportionate, there are doubles, jaggies (a technical term in pixel art to describe specific errors in certain areas).

Of course, back then, I didn’t have enough knowledge or practice because I hadn’t developed the skill yet.

But this is one of the first pieces, perhaps the very first one I made when I started developing my pixel art skills.

I remember how I gradually started taking risks and began practicing with human figures, using photos of people I saw as references.

Here’s one of the first photos I used to start practicing, and this was about two or three months after I made the first drawing.

Human Portrait

This one turned out a little better, but it’s still really awful from my point of view because it still has many, many shortcomings.

Here you can see how the effort and improvement from dedicating myself to learning about the chromatic scale, color theory, warm and cool colors, led me to improve my technique and, of course, the quality of my drawings.

Bing AI

Little by little, I progressively improved, until I moved on to drawing a moon with stars, like the one you see here, with a planet, which was also part of my early beginnings, after making the Albirodonte and the portrait figure.

Moon and planet at space

Let’s say this would be my third practice in developing my skills.

Then I kept learning more and practicing because I decided not to give up until I achieved significant improvement and noticeable progress, and I managed to draw this forest landscape, which today I look at and realize it doesn’t do justice to the level I’ve reached now because I’ve improved so much.

Beatiful Forest

But here you can see the forest I drew, and I’ve had a very interesting development, and the quality I’ve achieved makes me very satisfied.

To the point where here’s one of my works, let’s say about a year after I learned all the techniques and everything, here you can see a beach I managed to draw using impressionism techniques and the skills I’ve learned with shading and very advanced things.

Sandy Beach

You can see that all the effort of practicing these skills over time has taken me on a beautiful, lovely, and interesting journey, and I must say I feel very proud and happy for what I’ve achieved, and above all, for what I’m doing because it’s something I thoroughly enjoy and it keeps me amazed, passionate, and I continue doing it with great pleasure.

This is a sample of what today’s topic is about, where we can see how all the effort put into practicing this skill gives us such good and beautiful results.

And I feel very proud of the level I’ve reached and to see that all the effort I’ve put in has given me fantastic results.