Mona Lisa in MS Paint

April 4, 2007 4:44 AM

People have drawn river landscapes (1, 2) in MS Paint, but how about the Mona Lisa?
posted by divabat (13 comments total)

Even more incredibly, I've heard that there are a few artists who've even painted scenes such as these using substances smeared on a piece of paper using a brush-like tool.
posted by DU at 5:01 AM on April 4, 2007

i think this guy does it better ... or maybe this guy

or maybe ...
posted by pyramid termite at 5:08 AM on April 4, 2007

Bless you, MS Paint.
posted by hal9k at 5:15 AM on April 4, 2007

That's impressive, but definitely not as impressive as the many video responses to it.
posted by tastybrains at 5:30 AM on April 4, 2007

Just absolutely AWESOME. What incredible skills. To go from a white canvas to that in less than 3 hours! I like how the original portrait is laid over as the last frame...which is what I hoped would happen.

The music really works with the accelerated pace...at least for me.

Thanks, divabat.
posted by rmmcclay at 5:44 AM on April 4, 2007

He seemed to be rushing.
posted by dhartung at 6:43 AM on April 4, 2007

Wow‽ Good stuff. Truly standards are so high that creating fine art is no longer good enough; you have to create fine art whilst dealing with a major impediment. I wonder if this guy's good enough to paint the Mona Lisa in MS Paint and have me jogging his arm every nine seconds.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 7:16 AM on April 4, 2007

Well, I'm impressed, in the same way that I was impressed by the guy who moved a houseful of belongings with his bike.
posted by googly at 7:27 AM on April 4, 2007

Eh! She's better in the original ascii.
posted by Trochanter at 7:54 AM on April 4, 2007

That's totally a dude in the painting. The artistic process reveals as much.
posted by I Am Not a Lobster at 8:28 AM on April 4, 2007

Thanks to this, I have now seen possibly the best ever response on YouTube, replete with one of the best pleading comments too.
posted by davehat at 10:43 AM on April 4, 2007

davehat: unless you're being sarcastic, that's the worst response ever to a youtube video. Although I have to yet to see a response that was actually interesting.
posted by clockworkjoe at 2:03 PM on April 4, 2007

It appears that the first few minutes were spent tracing a photograph of the original Mona Lisa to identify the key points of the face to get the proportions correct. So while the shading techniques are exemplary (particularly so considering how craptacular the MS Paint palette is), I am not nearly as stunned as I feel I should be.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:08 PM on April 4, 2007