Pixel Art

Pixel art is all the rage! Generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image, the pixel derives from an etymological combination of pix (short for pictures) and el (from element). The word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies by photojournalists. The concept of a picture element dates to the earliest days of television, for example as "Bildpunkt" (the German word for pixel, literally means 'picture point') in the 1888 German patent of Paul Nipkow. In color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. 

During the 1990s, the widespread availability of video games and the advancement in raster graphics technology allowed for professional graphic designers to specialize in working on computer graphics. This is how pixel art first came about in a widespread popularization of video games whose visual content was of a pixelated digital nature.

The measures dots per inch and pixels per inch are sometimes used interchangeably, but have distinct meanings, especially for printer devices, where dpi is a measure of the printer's density of dot (e.g. ink droplet) placement. Pixel art largely relies on the printing medium. The more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original. Pixel art plays upon the resolution of digital images in varying degrees. Sometimes intended to be hyper-realist, the quality of an image may appear photographic in its closeness to the reality of the portrayal of the subject. Otherwise, some pixel art artists intend to present a more obviously pixelated formatting. The use of big squares to blur the whole, is something that is becoming a more visible trend in the art world.

Discover on Artsper some of the best from a selection of contemporary artists creating pixel art!