This Hurts My Eyes

A drawing of a little guy.

In my search for fun, unique, and satisfying online drawing tools, I stumbled on Rob Manuel's ZX81 Draw by serendipitous accident, and in a secret way. What happened was: I saw him posting drawings he was making with this tool on Bluesky and asked him if he was doing that in-browser, and then he kindly sent me a secret link, because the thing isn't intended for public use, at the time of writing.

A drawing of a dog. Text reads: "How do you make a ZX81 go woof? Set it on fire".
Rob's frightening image of a dog.

So, lucky me, I have secured for myself a glorious new tool. And the great thing about this one is that it can very quickly strain my eyes. Yay!

A complex art piece featuring a woman, and the text "beautiful>angel>queen>".

I'm not familiar with the ZX81, a British home computer model released in 1981, but as you can see, it has a particular display aesthetic, comprised of some interesting black and white glyphs that can rapidly create a sickening kind of magic eye puzzle texture, if arranged optimally, that boggles the senses.

A drawing of a wide-eyed dog saying "help me".

You're seeing the gorgeous art it's capable of here, and I don't think it's too bad just looking at these images, but drawing them made me feel genuinely nauseous, so I think this tool may be one to use in short stretches.

A drawing of a person walking under the sun. Text reads: "well dear, the sun is shining - let us not fight today - please".

Fortunately, I am a fighter. I am strong, and I can endure such computer-based illnesses if it means drawing beautiful images that anyone on Earth would surely be delighted to see. And you know what else is great about these pictures? They're like, six measly kilobytes. I love that for them.

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