
A 97-Year-Old Man Who Draws Using Microsoft Paint from Windows ’95 - tvladeck
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/07/the-pixel-painter-a-97-year-old-man-who-paints-using-microsoft-paint-from-windows-95/
======
freework
If there is such a thing as a software hall of fame, MSPaint deserves to be in
the inaugural class. Microsoft has written some real crap over the years, but
MSPaint is no one of them. Its a shame that Microsoft seems to have left
MSPaint behind after XP. I've tried all the open source MSPaint alternatives,
and none of them even come close to being as good as MSPaint. Its like the
"Super Mario Bros" of desktop software.

~~~
stiff
You must be kidding. It's a solid step back from Sketchpad developed in 1963:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o)

Apple had an almost identical drawing program in the early MacOS version:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint)

There were tens of better drawing programs meanwhile, for example I remember
being able to do animations as a 5 year old kid using the fantastic Fanta
Vision program under MS DOS (pity the editing isn't shown in the video):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE)
[http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision](http://www.old-
games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision)

Unfortunately the leading open source painting programs are remarkably
uninspired, interfaces of Gimp and Inkscape are truly a mess, but then artists
are hardly Linux users. On OSX there are a lot of great painting programs, for
example:

[http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html](http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html)

~~~
vidarh
MsPaint only receives that kind of response from people because it was near
universally available for a lot of people.

Deluxe Paint is still my favourite, but there's a long list of much better
paint programs for the Amiga too, but the vast majority of people who have
used MS Paint have never seen any of them.

~~~
Tloewald
Deluxe Paint was an obvious extension of MacPaint for color work, but the
ultimate version of it (written by the same people) was Studio/32 for the Mac
(which also predates MSPaint). Let's not forget Photoshop and Fractal Painter
predate MSPaint.

~~~
vidarh
Deluxe Paint is not an extension/clone of MacPaint unlike most of the early
paint applications of the era.

Dan Silva (the creator of Deluxe Paint) worked at Xerox before he got to EA.
While there designed an in house paint application for the Xerox Star based on
inspiration from SuperPaint by Richard Shoup (at Xerox Parc). When Silva
joined EA in 1983, he wrote a version of Doodle for MS DOS for in-house use at
EA - this port was named Prism. Deluxe Paint started as an Amiga port of
Prism.

(Source: The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga, Jimmy Maher, The MIT Ppess
Platform Studies series)

So they have shared heritage, given that MacPaint too was largely inspired by
work at Xerox, and it's possible Silva made adjustments to Prism/DPaint after
MacPaint was released since its release predated the commercial release of
DPaint, but the application was already in use before MacPaint was released,
though only in-house at EA.

If you look at the SuperPaint UI you can see its influence on some other
painting applications too - Koala Painter on the C64 for example has a
separate tools page that looks very close to SuperPaint.

But they are fundamentally different in other ways too - DPaint was designed
specifically as a tool for artists first, and turned into a product
afterwards. You see the difference in the various painting tools and brush
support etc. that means you can actually "paint" with DPaint in a way you most
certainly can't with MacPaint. The workflow is very different - you can do
great things with MacPaint (or MS Paint) too, but it is far more laborious
because it's hard to do much freehand drawing with it.

For me, when I moved from the C64, where I'd used Koala Painter - similar in
capabilities to MacPaint - to the Amiga and started using Deluxe Paint, I
first started drawing the same way I'd done on the C64: Laboriously placing
pixel by pixel, with the occasional line draw or flood fill. Freehand was
easier than on the C64 thanks to a mouse instead of a joystick, but the tools
were not a good fit for that other than for large surfaces. But then I started
experimenting with DPaints tools, like smear and blend, and my drawing style
changed and got much more fluid and relaxed and it actually carried over to
paper as well.

~~~
Tloewald
The history is interesting, but the influence of MacPaint on DeluxePaint was
absolutely plain. (DeluxePaint clearly had some innovations over MacPaint.)
Again, Studio/32 (and Studio/8 and Studio/1) were the full-circle -- the best
of everything. Indeed, I often wish Studio/32 had had greater influence than
Photoshop, which had and has a far inferior UI.

Source: I used all of these programs at the time, and spoke with people at EA
who were familiar with the development of Deluxe Paint and Studio/x.

~~~
vidarh
How exactly? Pretty much all of the functionality in MacPaint is in
SuperPaint, which predated it by 6 years (I'm assuming you're not confusing
them, but this is the _Xerox_ SuperPaint, not the later Mac application of the
same name).

There are some superficial UI similarities between MacPaint and DPaint in how
they both switched from a big separate panel of tools to toolbars along the
side, but that's pretty much the only similarities I can see between the two
that were not already present in SuperPaint, and it's line with a general
trend, and even there it's not all that obvious where DPaint draws most of its
inspiration.

They differed substantially in that DPaint is geared towards making the entire
screen available as a canvas, and most people I know who used DPaint spent
most of the time with the UI hidden, only turning it on briefly to pick
colours etc., or when using the split screen zoom (to date I hate the way most
paint apps do zoom with a vengeance - DPaint had it right).

In many ways the UI of SuperPaint is closer to the UI of DPaint than MacPaint
is. The windowed interface with multiple toolbars of MacPaint was totally
foreign to Amiga paint apps that for years followed the Deluxe Paint model of
putting tools firmly at the screen edges and making them easy to hide.

I don't see much influence from MacPaint that matters frankly, though I'm sure
you're right there was _some_ \- MacPaint did after all make it out the door
sooner and it'd be silly of them not to look at what was well received. But in
the overall design, the influence from SuperPaint is plain - all the
functionality shared between MacPaint and DPaint was there in Xerox'
SuperPaint years before.

Other than their shared heritage with SuperPaint and superficial UI stuff, to
me the two are fundamentally different - the "some innovations" is what makes
DPaint interesting at all: MacPaint is not usable as a paint application;
DPaint is. By the time DPaint came out, the market was flooded with MacPaint
clones. But pretty much all of them lacked the paint tools that made DPaint
exciting.

I'm not sure where Studio/x comes in - they post-date DPaint by several years
as far as I can tell (wow - that's a hard product line to Google; I'd never
heard of them before); the field was extremely crowded by then.

------
DigitalSea
In an age of Photoshop and Illustrator this guy is drawing in an archaic
painting program I used when I was in single digits and producing some awesome
results.

I don't care whether or not you think MsPaint is lame, old or other debatable
points about it, you can't argue this piece in particular 'Rambo' is awesome:
[http://hallasko.com/collections/prints/products/rambo](http://hallasko.com/collections/prints/products/rambo)

Being creative has nothing to do with what tools you use at the end of the
day. People were creative long before the digital age and this guy has proven
you don't need the latest, greatest or most expensive tools to produce a piece
of art. Just an idea and any means to explore that idea is all you need.

This is nothing short of inspiring to me. Probably one of the most positive
and inspiring things I've seen on HN in a long time.

------
beforebeta
I read this and I think - what would the creator of MS Paint think if he read
this story. As a developer and a creator, if I would ever read a story like
this, about a product that I had created, I would think my life to be
complete. Stories like this inspire me to keep stretching the boundary of what
is possible and to keep creating...

------
peterkelly
Wow!

Just goes to show it's not about what tool you use, it's about your skills and
what you can do with it.

We would do well to remember this in all the programming language debates we
like to have here.

~~~
atondwal
Unless it's about text editors. Then you can't get _anything_ done if you
don't use ed.

------
unimpressive
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.)

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

~~~
woofyman
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.

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

------
coldcode
I don't care what some fancy digital artist complains about above. It's
beautiful. You try painting something beautiful with 90% of your vision gone.
I imagine you probably dislike Michelangelo's work since he didn't use
Photoshop either.

------
bane
A quote I once heard but can't remember the attribution "you don't need better
tools, you need to do better with the tools you have"

also [http://readwrite.com/2013/06/11/excel-is-an-art-form-
these-b...](http://readwrite.com/2013/06/11/excel-is-an-art-form-these-
beautiful-images-are-proof)

~~~
zw123456
When I was growing up in Oregon, the dude that was the awesomest best skiier,
was the guy wearing Levi's and really shitty skis. Some things never change.

~~~
alan_cx
Reminds me of Seasick Steve. He plays a guitar with 3 strings missing. Sounds
better than most with all 6.

~~~
phormula
look up Brushy One String

------
fear91
It's always amazing to hear senile (but still sharp) people talk.

97 years of existence must teach a lot about life and what is really
important.

I wonder what could be achieved in one particular field of expertise if you
devoted all that time to it. It's over 500,000 hours of possible learning (
for a 90 year old ). Some say that 10,000 hours is what takes to gain mastery
( I know this is controversial ).

I like to imagine myself mysteriously falling into some other dimension where
I am forced to live for 1000000 years and practice one craft, then returning
and comparing my skills to those who had only one short life :) It helps to
push the boundary of what seems "impossible" a little bit more.

~~~
Hello71
[http://www.xkcd.com/505/](http://www.xkcd.com/505/)

~~~
photorized
That was beautiful.

------
kabisote
Two statements from Grandpa that made an impact on me: _" I got a lot of
patience. That's what you really need anyway."_ and _" When I worked I always
had to do something to please the client. Now I can do whatever I want."_

------
cdhack
Sometimes old tools are better, they have a stable operation and a lower CPU
and memory usage. Maybe some famous tools like Photoshop should review their
products carefully, they do have abundant functions, but to a certain extent,
are they useful or practical for most common users?

Best wishes to this great man.

~~~
unimpressive
>are they useful or practical for most common users?

Photoshop purchased legitimately is extremely expensive, it's not targeted at
common users.

~~~
cdhack
It's not wise to simply judge a product's user by its price. MS Office
professional is expensive, most users are still ordinary people.

------
Lazaro4100
I have to admit that the video made me tear. As a graphic artist myself, this
man is my ultimate hero!

------
iopq
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb3A1TdqXug](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb3A1TdqXug)
this one is more impressive to me than his artwork

~~~
primelens
I agree that it shows awesome mastery of paint, but the 97 year gentleman is
making his _own_ art - he just uses paint to do it.

------
D9u
Windows "Paintbrush" was the application that piqued my interest in computers
back in 1991. My artistic skills are definitely less than acceptable, and my
inability to color within the lines in my grand-children's coloring books is
proof. But with "pbrush.exe" I was ushered into an entirely new realm where
even I could draw a straight line, or perfect spheres and polygons.

However, none of my art work ever looked as awesome as that produced by Mr
Lasko.

------
stephth
Has anyone found any of his paintings in native resolution? I'd agree if you
said that was a requirement to fully appreciate pixel art.

------
sp332
The title reminded me of "Hyperbole and a Half"
[http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-
unde...](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-
basic-concepts.html) which manages to fit some pretty complex emotional
expressions into mspaint-based stick figures.

------
Roonerelli
On a similar note, you can send in suggestions to this guy and he'll draw them
in MS-Paint

[http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/](http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/)

There are a lot of really funny ones in there

~~~
Toenex
Truly a beautiful thing.

------
jrarredondo
After a while, most HN posts just fade away in my memory.

I will remember this one forever.

------
phektus
I fell in love with computers during high school, where my teacher would allow
me to play pokemon via gba rom in exchange for creating our school brochures
and flyers using MSPaint. I have the honor of making the first soft version of
our school logo, which the school only have in paper back then. Surprisingly,
I didn't learn Photoshop in college and just went full speed to programming,
which I hated in high school as it was taught using Visual Basic.

------
semicolondev
I use Paint:

1)when I'm bored.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bhu1st/4911339994/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bhu1st/4911339994/)

2)when I've to crop/edit quick screenshots

3) while teaching students about web design process (I do design/prototype
quick web page layouts using paint).

4)meme generator ! Stitch images quickly to share it online.

While switching to Linux or other OS I sometime unknowingly try to hit
win-r->mspaint.

------
akadien
This is cool. It demonstrates that imagination is more important than tools.
I'm going to code in Notepad.exe today as a show of support.

------
mokash
We spend so much time discussing to death the tools we use, time which should
be spent using them instead. This man just got on with it.

------
emitstop
This is one of the most inspiring videos I've had the pleasure of watching.
This gives me hope for when (if) I become an old man myself. I do a lot of
creative work, and if I ever lost the ability to do or experience those
things. It'd just be devastating. Time goes by so quick.

------
baumgarn
Nice guy and paintings. Still, I am fed up with the obtrusive "pitch"
narrative of these kind of videos. If the resulting sentiment is mainly due to
technical style, what does that say about your real values?

------
xwowsersx
Just came here to say this was awesome. Really moving. Inspired by how full of
life Hal seems even at his advanced age. Also, really nice to see technology
enhance someone's life in such a wholesome, simple way.

------
BasilAwad
This is a great story. These are also the type of stories that should be
shared to build bridges between different cultures and communities. The
elderly are our nation's treasure.

~~~
logn
They are. And soon we'll be them. I hope my NES works when I'm 90. And I'm
hoping they still have a copy of Notepad and javac.exe around for me.

------
zw123456
Whether you are using ancient tools like brushes and oil, or the most cutting
edge paint program out there or MS Paint, or whatever, it is the artist's
skill that matters.

------
dmotles
Yay :) The video made me very happy. Thanks for sharing.

------
japt
it's not the tool it's how you use it

------
ftwinnovations
This was so inspirational and amazing that I purchased two prints for my
office.

Nice work grandpa!

------
alinspired
This should be called "A 97-Year-Old Man Who Draws".. MAN capitalized

------
hablahaha
Prints! Shut up and take my money! Oh, that's a lot of money...

------
ivanbrussik
this man is inspiring, what a beautiful story

i love MS Paint - I work in a large marketing firm and use it everyday
sometimes on advertisements that a million people see

------
enemtin
MS Paint. What a classic.

------
keepingcom
No layers... wow. I wish I still had win 95 to try to draw without any layer

~~~
mkr-hn
You can use GIMP or Photoshop without adding layers.

------
lettergram
I'm impressed.

------
cjh_
Truly stunning.

------
calandoa
Who DARE challenge the power of MS Paint?

[http://www.elftor.com/elftor.php?number=112](http://www.elftor.com/elftor.php?number=112)

------
koft
kool

