Bristol artist’s pixel pet project

He’s best known for his paintings of surreal scenes suggested by thousands of complete strangers from across the world, but now Bristol-based artist Jim’ll Paint It has started a pet project to recreate parts of his home city in pixels.

Jim has published a taster as he completed a small section of Stokes Croft featuring the area around Hamilton House, near to where he works on Gloucester Road.

Particularly fascinated by Bristol’s rich tapestry of pubs, inns and ale houses, Jim has also started producing some beloved boozers in his retro pixelated style. 

“I could use Photoshop and create true-to-life reproductions, but that’s not the point,” Jim explains. 

“I like the retro style of pixels; for people of my age, it’s reminiscent of old video games.” 

Like modern-day cross stitch, Jim has already completed the Bag of Nails and Three Tuns in Hotwells, Small Bar on King Street, the Star & Garter in Montpelier and the Old Stillage in Redfield – all to exactly the same scale as his Stokes Croft streetscape

It was as he completed the Love Inn on his Stokes Croft piece that Jim got the idea to continue creating city drinking spots. 

“I use Google Maps to get a 360-degree perspective of the building. Using features like doorframes, I’m able to build up a rough scale for the building.

“The hardest part of the project is depicting the ramshackle nature of these buildings with something as rigid as pixels.” 

So why does pixel art motivate Jim? “I think the constraints make the task more surmountable. It’s about finding how far I can take the medium, rather than searching endlessly for ever better ways to represent the subjects.”

For now it’s just a passion project which has served as a useful distraction from his Jim’ll Paint It alter-ego with 600,000 followers on Facebook where he releases custom-made graphic art.

Jim remains best known for his Jim’ll Paint It project, where for the last four years he has painted pictures for people for free of absolutely anything they request using Microsoft Paint. 

I’ve been doing Jim’ll Paint It for four years as of today. Here’s some celebratory Ross Kemp on Toast. pic.twitter.com/arwh7pokLf

— Jim’ll Paint It (@Jimllpaintit) February 18, 2017

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Trump, Pence and William Pryor on a RuPaul-esque drag show with Obama as RuPaul telling them to Sashay Away – as requested by Adam Godding pic.twitter.com/IF7q5xJatn

— Jim’ll Paint It (@Jimllpaintit) January 26, 2017

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When Jonathan Pearce merged realities and commentated on a match between the house robots from Robot Wars and Chelsea? – Tom Hackwell pic.twitter.com/WPeiXXPMvn

— Jim’ll Paint It (@Jimllpaintit) February 3, 2017

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Brunel refusing a threesome from an elderly couple whilst a completely unprepared chicken, feathers and all, cooks in the oven – Jamie Green pic.twitter.com/BpuEYQMcKc

— Jim’ll Paint It (@Jimllpaintit) November 29, 2016

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A children’s birthday party set in an alternate universe where donkeys evolved to be the dominant species – as requested by Leo Nicoletti pic.twitter.com/D9RyBxxGj9

— Jim’ll Paint It (@Jimllpaintit) January 12, 2017

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Spider-Man sitting at a drum kit while J.K. Simmons pelts him with Uncle Ben’s rice and yells at him to stay in time – Dominic Burchnall pic.twitter.com/EoJlOJGquj

— Jim’ll Paint It (@Jimllpaintit) February 16, 2017

Read more: City Hall opens up new spaces for local artists