Pixel art describes a technique for creating digital illustrations at the individual pixel level. This type of art was the result of low resolution displays in early videogame systems. Today, our phone and computer displays have millions of pixels. Despite this, the art form is very popular and the “retro” videogame look is used in many contemporary games.

Before working on the larger illustrations in Collection 5, I completed a few more small versions.

Collection 4

The village hall is at the heart of the community and hosts so many events that it deserves inclusion. I was struggling with the trees so I put this off for ages but I’m happy with the final result.

The old school house is a lovely building but I was struggling with trees again! I tried so many versions before settling on this look.

I love these cottages on Castle Road and the one with the yellow door in particular. I was tempted to exclude the wires and lamp post but I want these illustrations to be accurate and recognisable. I think it works.

This is another one of my favourite houses! The colour of the brickwork is great.

Collection 6

I always planned to do an illustration of plan2ride and I had a couple of requests so I created four more. All the buildings in this collection are very close together, which wasn’t deliberate but a happy accident.

The green bike sticking out from plan2ride is iconic so I’m glad I managed to include it. The summer bunting was up when I took the reference photo so decided to include it for some extra colour.

This cottage is next to Salem Chapel and has been renovated recently. I really like the contrast of the white brickwork.

I love the rainbow in the window of this house and there’s usually some flowers on the sill to add some more colour.

The blue house

This brings the total number of illustrations to 24. There are a few more buildings I’d like to complete and I’ve had some more requests.

#PixelTon Map

I thought it would be interesting to arrange the illustrations geographically…