Although I like drawing and composing music, I am a pixel artist as a main. I have been creating art in this medium for the last 20 years, always improving my skills as time passes.

　My friends know me from my projects on The Spriters Resource and related sites. I was quite prolific there, and once the internet decided to shift towards the microblog genre, I too followed suit, although I did prefer the old forum method personally. That's a talk for another day.

　The fun part of pixel art is that due to its nature, even a very small canvas for many other art forms can be really big for pixel art. Take this artwork I completed recently, for example:

"Patchouli Knowledge", a character from Touhou series, sitting on a round hole on a wooden bookshelf, with the full moon visible on the window

　This looks quite detailed, but it all fits in a 96x96 pixel canvas. And it doesn't feel particularly crowded nor lacking in detail: everything depicted there is readable and clear. The candle, books, hand poses and wrinkles on the cloth are all represented, despite the resolution.

　Pixel art is all about doing more with less: smaller canvas sizes don't necessarily mean your art needs to be simple. With the correct technique, you can really make a lot of nuanced things with the pixels.

　I feel like a lot of pixel artists today work with very big canvas sizes. I mean things that are way over 200 pixels in either direction. These large art pieces are often impressive, and show the level of care the artist has taken to craft them.

　Those large sizes are valid for pixel art too, of course: please do not get the idea that I disagree with large art pieces. What I merely say is when the canvas is large, the pixel placement logic changes considerably.

　If I can give an analogy, it is similar to driving a car in a crowded city downtown versus driving on an interstate highway. Both are the same activity - driving a car - but driving in the downtown requires slower and precise movements, while the highway lets you drive faster, but not have to dodge often. The mentality changes seamlessly as you move in and out of focus.

　Working with smaller canvas sizes give pixel art a deliberate, almost puzzle-like quality that I really enjoy, and I often see myself employing this technique as I create. This is why I really love this medium and keep doing it.

　Different people might have different reasons to love pixel art than I do, but they're no less valid, and the more people appreciate this lovely medium, the better. I ask you, what do you love about pixel art?