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I am not an artist. My mom was an artist. She did office work for most of my life but in her soul she was an artist and she actually held an arts degree. The degree was with an emphasis in ceramics but you name it, she did it. Weaving, copper enamling, woodwork, making miniatures, sewing, painting - if it could be crafted, she could do something with it. Even if you didn't think it could be crafted, she could do something with it! My son has inherited her talents. I was skipped. I am so UN-artsy it's not even funny. I don't know, maybe I'm selling myself short. I've done my cross stitch and rubber stamping and I learned how to make 88x31 buttons! I was so excited when I figured that out. Which brings me to a little rant -

I have not really dealt with computer graphics so I was really working from nothing as far as a knowledge base. And I did so much searching on how to make these damn buttons! I know, there are some button generators out there but I had *ideas* that the generators wouldn't realize for me. And I searched ALL OVER THE WEB for some simple instructions. And a lot of what I found was written like ancient recipes where it's basically take some stuff, mix it up, done. Seriously, "You know, just open up Paint, make a canvas and save it!" leaves a lot to be desired for a neophyte learner. It's like the drawing an owl with 2 circles frustration:

I finally ended up finding 2 sources that really helped me - a YouTube video from 2009 which made a cute button step-by-step using GIMP and another site from 2013, that I had to translate from Italian.

Anyhow, I have been entranced with pixel art. It's so cute! I want to do it! But see "not an artist." I found a site that I surfed to for other random web surfing reasons and there was a lovely little tutorial showing how to use the Piskel app. And I've made a couple things so far. Here's my first critter. Not sure what he is but he blinks and bounces!

Later guys .... I'm gonna go make more art!