By Kate V., 5th grade

Hello all! This is Pixel Art! For those of you who didn’t read my Coming Soon post, pixel art is making pictures/images from pixels on games like Minecraft or The Sandbox and on computer programs. I sometimes don’t have access to these things, however, so I just like to use graph paper.

For example, this is Nyan Cat, half Pop-Tart half cat. I drew this for my math teacher, Carrie Ann. Nyan Cat is the result of a couple people suggesting that a certain Chris Torres draw a Pop-Tart and a cat. He drew a hybrid and several days later, the hit video Nyan Cat came out. The coarse pixels are perfect for pixel art. Recreating this is easy; just look up “Nyan cat pixel art” and the search results are very useful.

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Nyan Cat drawing by Kate V.

Another good topic for pixel art is Super Mario. Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and the signature Mario mushroom are easy to find in coarse pixels, and so are all the power-ups. I have drawn the Ice Power and the Fire Power (you can throw ice balls in the former and throw fireballs in the latter).

Last but definitely not least, the lettering is pretty cool. I prefer to use my own style, and I do my A’s and C’s a bit differently. I also use diagonal rows of units. A good trick to reserve space is to set a limit of units the letters take up; I always make mine five units tall and make sure that they are no longer than five units. Speaking of units, I would recommend using one-fourth inch graph paper. Which means that a unit is a fourth of an inch.

I hope this article was interesting! Pixel art is really easy to do, and best of all it looks cool, too.

Bye for now,

Kate V