picnic at prospect park

2022-02-20

today, i worked on a picnic painting in a web version of kid pix:

=> https://kidpix.app

i've never used it til now. it's a pretty fun and restrictive program. it has no layers like many other simple-ish art programs (ms paint, bitpaint, strike, and others that may be in here:)

=> https://tinytools.directory/

unlike those programs though, kid pix 1.0 doesn't have the ability to undo or redo more than 1 action - which is quite essential to me, since i'm prone to making bad strokes. if the texture of the painting was simple, undo matters less because i can erase something and redraw it.

but for my painting, i layered patterns upon patterns, much like watercolor glazes, to create more colors and depth. messing them up would either be annoying to fix, or best left alone.

thankfully, this website lets you import images to the canvas, so i could save versions of my painting as i progressed and come back to them if i wanted to take it another direction. there are two catches.

1. the image doesn't automatically position itself to the top-left edge. you have to position it yourself, with only your mouse. this means that fixing mistakes in patterns is now impossible, because the pattern is drawn a pixel away from where the pattern used to be. i mainly used this to experiment with composition, so it didn't matter much.

2. the site only allows one painting at a time. in firefox, there are containers you can use to have separate cookies, so i didn't have to reset and import an image at a slightly different position each time i wanted to experiment. i just set up 2 contained versions of kid pix and switched between them. no idea what other browser users could do if they wanted 3 different kid pix canvas.

in my art, the background usually comes first. otherwise, characters and props don't fit in with the surroundings as well, since a background establishes perspective and a lot of the organization of a piece.

=> img/kidpix-1.png

this is what i made yesterday night, resized to fit upload requirements. i like using the tools i have to create good shapes that not only make my workload easier, but also fit into the ethos of the program. i used wacky brush > pie, zigzag, and fuzzer a lot in this phase.

in ms paint, i use the shapes sometimes to guide creature creation, which isn't what most ms paint users do (they stick to the pencil, marker, and natural pencil brushes for the most part). i also like to use the oil and watercolor paint brushes, which are two of the most underrated features of ms paint. i'm glad that manipulating anti-aliasing and using the fill tool on images is common, since the artifacts that come from that are really pleasing.

this could've been more interesting and dramatic, but i haven't painted in a while and my prospect park references had these generic colors. this is the exact spot that's mentioned in detransition, baby, right next to picnic house.

i didn't realize the rubber stamp tool did something cool until after i finished this part, but i immediately spent 10 minutes playing with them, just in awe of how many stamps there are.

originally, my plan was to create a simple and impressionistic rendering of various people on the hill, who would be amy, reese, iris, and perhaps 6 other girls. but i have no idea how to use linear perspective on a hill or mountain, which makes it hard to make the characters and props look natural, and kid pix doesn't seem like the program a beginner should attempt that in. i tested drawing reese on a picnic blanket and i could tell going this route wasn't going to go well.

so i decided to use stamps for the main trees, for the characters who are no longer human but animals, and for props.

=> img/kidpix-2.jpg

i redrew the tree leaves 4 times before i stuck with this version, and the trees were the hardest part of the painting, not including the shadows. it's pretty hard to make them look nice, with a foliage stamp that only comes in that size and no layers.

the 3x3 quilt-like is meant to be a picnic blanket. the images don't contrast well with other sprite, but i couldn't find any images that would do a better job. also, these creatures have no relation to the characters i had in mind, but i could bullshit them in if i had to.

i'll see if i want to change anything tomorrow, and then submit it.

update 2022-05-10 changed links

2022-07-11 renamed