I was first exposed to pixel art like almost everyone else, through video games. The Atari 2600 was in the middle of its run as king of the consoles. I never had one so I spent a lot of time playing Adventure, Space Invaders, Pitfall and Centipede on my friends machines.

Sometimes I could talk mom and dad into going to the local pizza joint where I'd get a small fix of these modern marvels. Some of my favorites there were Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Defender and Tempest. I suffered quickly through the mostly inedible pizza so I could spend the majorioty of my time playing games.

I had the occasional computers as a teen but it really wasn't the same as owning a full on console. So, when I turned 21 I saved money and bought a Sega Genesis. 16-bit games were unbelievable compared to the games I was used to playing.

Like everyone back then we all eagerly awaited the next version of consoles to see where the graphics hardware would take us next. Pixels gave way to polygons and before long it was pretty hard to find a pixel game anymore.

When the iPhone came out developers started putting out games like Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery, Sword of Xolan, Mikey Hooks, Goblin Sword, Heroes of Loot, Random Heroes and of course Metal Slug ports. I was reminded of how much I loved Pixel art. I made my first forays into drawing some of my own. I had always liked to draw and had done some good work but learning the ins and outs of placing pixels correctly, picking a pallette and composition at extremely small sizes really tested me. Turns out I loved all the restrictions. I started showing my art around and got way more positive reaction than any of the other art I had done. So I kept going. Then a style emerged and I never looked back.

You do need to know I don't take any of this seriously. I just do it for fun. I also don't really draw any video game stuff. I basically draw the same things I would have done in Procreate as Pixels. I love the laughs and comments I get. But really I do it for myself. I really just love the craft of working with pixels. I almost exclusively use Pixaki on an Ipad Pro but I occasionally jump into Photoshop to do quick tweaks.

Anyway, I hope you have fun looking around.

---PixelMiser.