Dedd Pixel

Mashable recently described fascinating artwork by Adam Lister, who creates watercolor paintings of classical works in blocky, 8-bit like format.  I love his work, not only because of the video game reference, but because I’m impressed by his control over the medium.  As someone who can’t make watercolor paint do anything other than form nebulous blurs, I can appreciate his fine linework and controlled coloration.

I feel 8-bit video games are a natural inspiration for his work.  Impressionism used tiny brush strokes, often focusing on how light hits a subject.  8-bit video game graphics are constructed from tiny pixels, with every pixel critically placed to provide definition of the subject.  Sometimes a single pixel is all that exists to represent the highlight or shadow.

What’s especially interesting about this work is how the human brain reacts.  While the images are abstracted from what we recognize from the original art pieces, we clearly know what paintings they represent – assuming, of course, that we are familiar with the originals.  I zoomed in with my browser as far as it could go and the images were still recognizable to me regardless of what part of the image I was looking at.  The brain has an amazing capacity to process information and it does not require realism to understand it.  Most of what we see and experience on a daily basis are fast glimpses of reality, but our brain assembles these bits of information to present to us our understanding of the world.

While modern day video games focus on high-resolution, highly realistic graphics, the 8-bit imagery of yore will always hold appeal.