Art of Cathy Vey: Minecraft art. Also I hate blogs like this.

You know ones that update once every 5 months?

I was reminded to come on here because I needed images of things from way back when in 2009. I'm also feeling the pressure of needing to sell things....or *GASP* get a 9-5 job. Even though I feel like I do things everyday. Now that E is back in school full time I need to be doing SOMETHING.

To satisfy the one person who may come on here I did some flat minecraft pixel art. Meaning in a 128 by 128 block area I placed blocks down so when you make a minecraft map it shows up, and therefore you can place the map on your wall making a painting. For any of you that play minecraft you know how tedious this might be, and doing so in survival makes it much harder.

This may or may not turn into some sort of makeshift tutorial. Please ignore if you don't play minecraft.

To do this in survival (really the only reason why you would is if you are on a survival server, otherwise doing this in creative is so much easier), you need to find a flat-ish area or turn a large 128 by 128 area flat. Test your ideal area by making a map and make sure to mark where you were standing so you can repeat the map placement when you make something new. More often than not, not only will you have to flatten an area but you might have to fill in an area as well. For example the area I chose was basically half desert and half ocean so I had to extend the land so it filled in the whole map. Pick a block that would make a good base. Another mistake I made while adding land is I used anything available at the time and thought dirt would be a good idea for most of it. Somehow someone put in a grass block (or maybe I did) so most of the map ended up green. A grass, cobble stone and sandstone ground is not really attractive even if you are trying to fill in the whole map with an image. Stick with one block if you are adding land, and if you have an large area of land the best to use is the desert.

Lighting is another issue. You kinda of don't want lighting to be in the way but you don't want it to show up on the map either. At first I had some wool blocks the same color as I was using and I stuck torches on top of it. Not a bad idea but a pain to remove. Then I thought "oh yeah sea lanterns in the ground!" This is better, however unlike torches they do show up on maps unless you cover them with carpet. It is also noted that torches on the ground with carpet on top will show the ground color, not the carpet color on the map as well. Floating torches using glass might hold up as well, though make sure the ground is light enough.

So the new solution is sea lanterns still in the ground and then add snow and wool blocks all over so it is like a blank sheet of paper to work on. Not the best solution but it will have to do.

In survival acquiring blocks becomes a hassle, so it becomes ideal to use the cheapest option. Wool (including carpet), stained glass and clay will all have the same color on the map, meaning for example blue wool,glass and clay will be the same blue on the map. The cheapest and least labor intensive way to go is wool carpet, as you get 3 carpets for every 2 wool blocks. Sheep are also easy to keep and dye as needed.

There are other blocks besides the dye colors that will show up on map that you can experiment with. For example redstone blocks come up as a much brighter red, netherrack is a dark maroon color, and lapis blocks are a diffrent and brighter shade of blue. Keep this in mind if you have an image with a lot of color variations and shade. Some images make not work as well as others because of this as well unless you find a creative solution to the color limitations.

Anyways after all that you could grid it out or do what I do and just wing it. :P

So this was my first experiment...