Portlandia portraits

Toni & Candace

My loves. Probably my favorite characters on the show. They are fierce feminists and terrible bookstore owners.

Kath & Dave

Kath and Dave are tightly wound and very purposeful people. They are in a constant state of earnestly doing, or preparing to earnestly do something.

Lance & Nina

Lance is a no-nonsense, alpha male mechanic. Nina is a fun-loving, sweet, social media addicted girly-girl. Like two peas in a pod.

Nance & Peter

Peter is a recovering pasta addict. Nance always stands by “her guy.” I love them, but frankly, sometimes I think she deserves better.

Irys & Spyke

Lovely, punk couple. Aggressively allergic to the status quo and hippies.

Carrie & Fred

The creators and stars of the show!

Tools & References

• Adobe Illustrator
• Alex Griendling’s pixel art tutorial.

Inspiration

I’ve always loved pixel art. A lot of it probably has to do with being a child of the 80’s and growing up playing video games on my classic Nintendo. I owned four games— Super Mario Bros 1 and 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants. Good times.

Recently though, I was inspired by other artists’ work and styles, like eBoy, Jaebum Joo, and last but not least, Alex Griendling. From the start, I was very curious about the creative process of pixel art and what kinds of tools, techniques, and programs people were using. I found resources online, but there was one tutorial by Alex Griendling that was particularly helpful. He also has a video recording his process from beginning to end that I found very valuable as well.

Process

Fred was a little easier to render. It helped that I had so much practice drawing Carrie already. Fred’s face is also simpler in a sense. His features, like his eyebrows and lips, for example, are more defined. His eyes are very round and his eyebrows are thicker, so I didn’t have to worry about rendering arcs. 

Capturing Carrie and Fred’s head structure and facial features were the main milestones. Once they were finalized, I could begin working on their subtle character expressions, e.g, Lance’s furrowed brow, Toni’s pouty lips, and Nina’s smile. It’s kind of like playing a Mr. Potato Head game except I have to make all the pieces.