I’ve always been an artist, I’ve always drawn pictures, and when it comes to digital
art and Microsoft Paint, I’ve taught myself completely.
My name is Pat Hines, I’m from Boston, I’ve lived here my whole life.
I’m sure you can hear my accent.
The sad thing is I didn’t even know I had it until I went to college.
I’m from West Roxbury, which is a part of the city of Boston.
It’s not the toughest part, it’s not Southie, it’s not Dorchester, it’s not Charlestown,
but it’s definitely a part of the city of Boston.
What got me started in Microsoft Paint and in digital art was I was working at a nursing
home when I was in college.
I was working overnights . And this was before Facebook, or YouTube, or, you know, I didn’t
even know if Wikipedia existed back then.
I don’t like Minesweeper or Solitaire or any of that stuff.
It was basically Paint or, you know, I slowly went insane.
It was just kinda screwing around with it at first, but as the years went by, I sort
of developed a technique.
And what I noticed about my work in Paint was that I had an identifiable style, which
I did not have ever when I worked in physical media, with pen and pencil or whatever.
Whenever I worked in other media, I was always aping someone else’s style.
Usually I start off, ironically enough with pencil and paper and I just do a little thumbnail
of the most basic composition.
And from there I open Paint, and I use — it’s called the pencil tool — and I do a very
very rough version of the composition.
And this ends up looking like what most people’s idea of MS Paint looks like, it’s very squiggly.
It’s kind of a mess.
This is basically my version of layers if you were working in Photoshop.
I don’t erase those original squiggles, but I go over them.
And from there I select the line tool and that’s when I create the final line art.
I know that’s kind of long and involved, but that’s Microsoft Paint.
It’s just the mouse.
I tried using a stylus with other programs, and I tried using it with Paint.
Only the line tool allows me to create really crisp pictures.
I’m always striving to have no pixels, like, bunched up on each other, no right angles,
you know?
Because if you do it that way it ends up looking jagged and blocky.
At the beginning I was using the spray can to do a lot of, like, shading and stuff.
When you press the spray can, all it does is spray out a bunch of pixels randomly.
So It took a lot of time to quit the spray can and use the line tool for pretty much
everything.
Although, ironically enough, in one of my pictures there’s graffiti on the walls and
I couldn’t figure out how to make graffiti in Paint.
And lo and behold I try the spray can and it works perfectly for it.
In terms of illustration, there’s a Russian illustrator named Ivan Bilibin, I think that’s
how you pronounce it.
He lived in the 1800s.
But if you were to look at his stuff, you’d see the connection between his stuff and my
stuff.
There’s a lot of the flat color but there’s also a lot of detail.
It looks so modern that when you find out this guy lived in the 1800s you’d just be
amazed.
I love Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, he’s another influence.
Drew Struzan, he did all the Back To The Future Posters.
David Mazzucchelli: he illustrated Batman: Year One and some Daredevil comics, really
amazing work.
My biggest inspiration for my current style for the MS Paint work is the illustrator Hergé.
He created the Tin Tin comic book series.
He was a Belgian comic book illustrator.
It wasn’t even a conscious thing that I wanted my stuff to look like his.
I guess they call the style “Ligne Claire” —
it means clear line style, you don’t do any shading with the line art.
It’s just all solid lines, it’s a very clean image, and then you do all the shading
with coloring.
“The program kind of dictated it, because I always did like that style.
It looked how it looked in my head originally or it looked even better.
From there I go straight into coloring.
With coloring, I use mostly either the paint can where you just press it and it fills in
a huge area.
Between that and the eraser is where I shade it, usually holding, like I said, the right
click on the eraser.
It’s usually just creating very simple gradients.
That’s how I always prove to people that it actually is Paint.
Just zoom in on those gradients and you can see.
It’s very uneven, you know, it’s kind of messy when you zoom into it.
But there really isn’t that much mystery to the coloring process.
I try not to use too many different colors.
I always start off by thinking, where is the light source, where is it coming from.
I use two versions of Paint.
F or the line art I use the old version and for the coloring I use the latest version,
or I guess the last version.
I always wanted to see a horror movie set at a summer camp, because even with twelve
or so Friday the 13th movies, I never thought there was a good one.
I couldn’t get the idea of the summer camp out of my head, and it kinda grew there until
I was creating history for it, and weird traditions, and from there it kind of just kept going.
To create the shading, it’s just a matter of creating a very simple gradient.
Say if it’s a skintone, if it’s a white person, it’ll be a peach color.
And from there I just make it a little darker, color that shaded part in with the paint can,
and then repeat that process with a darker version of that color to make the shadows
deeper.
It’s very easy for me to kind of to zone out when I do it, that’s why I say Paint
is like meditation for me.
I don’t really meditate, but it’s the closest I come to meditating.
People online, say on like Reddit or other sites, they always say ‘Oh you can do this
in Paint, you can work in Photoshop.’”
What they don’t understand is I really enjoy Paint and I’ve never enjoyed those other
programs.
That’s like my favorite time.
Nothing’s bothering me, I’m not thinking about the outside world, it’s a very enjoyable
time.
Thank you so much to Pat Hines for creating this work of art for us.
We’ve got more information about his work down in the description.
We also have two seven and a half hour videos of an MS Paint masterpiece being made — the
one that you just saw.
So if you want to watch it in real time, make some extra popcorn and enjoy.