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Comment by unimpressive | Hacker News Reader

This story illustrates two things that invalidate a lot of excuses.

1. It's probably not too late to start a new skill.

2. For digital drawing/painting in particular, the tools probably aren't as important as most people think. (Though to say they're not important would be lying. Bad tools shorten your life.)

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Older tools can be liberating because you have to work within their modest set of features. Choice isn't always a good thing etc.

This is true. I am not expert in PS, so when I use it I basically only use the basic tools that MS paint provide. Unless I use the auto blend feature which is a fantastic.

I think some of this art would be great backgrounds for indie pixel games.

Having a limited set of tools forces me to be more creative. When I only had simple monophonic synthesizers, the results were much better than with the nearly unlimited sounds at my disposal now.

I take your point, however, have you considered simulating a simple analogue synthesiser in something like PD?

"For digital drawing/painting in particular, the tools probably aren't as important as most people think"

I agree, there's a lot of longevity and capability in older software. Watching this MS Paint video makes me realise we're too quick to dismiss software as outdated or inadequate.

This story reminded me of another artist: an illustrator called Bob Staake who uses Photoshop 3 and a mouse to create his illustrations. He has a series of short videos on his website showing his process

http://www.bobstaake.com/pixfix/films.shtml

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