If you tuned in last time you already know that I’ve been making some upgrades to my travel paint kit after discovering Art Toolkit, which has apparently been there all along while I did years of fruitless searching. I was really excited to finally find something that could fit my full range of tube paints and take up almost no room in my bag.
After I filled the pans and let them dry down overnight I found that a few colors needed another layer, so today I thought I’d boot up No Man’s Sky and do some painting while I finish my new palette.
For the uninitiated: No Man’s Sky is a procedurally generated space exploration game, which means that as one flies around and explores a limitless universe (!!!), the game generates new and strange planets to land on, populated by new and strange flora and fauna, in a wild and psychedelic rainbow of colors, with oceans and mountains and pirates and storms and more. In short, the video game of my wildest dreams.
I immediately got a copy when it was released 2016 and, not being much of a gamer, spent a determined and frustrated six months figuring out how to play it. I had not played many video games since the little shoebox of N64 cartridges my dad bought off a coworker in the 90s, and it was far far beyond me, but I was highly motivated. Now apparently there were two joysticks, one controlling where I walked and one controlling where I looked. This was, at the outset, not something I could in any way manage.
My iteration of the main character (an amnesiac, shipwrecked space explorer) appeared to have spawned in a system overrun with cat-sized killer spiders, and because of my complete lack of familiarity with video game conventions, it was quite some time before I realized I had a weapon. Like nearly one full Earth year. There was much running away and shrieking. I found it so challenging and so transporting that I would often find myself in a state of exhilarated terror. I was hooked.
In those early days, the game was difficult not only because I didn’t know what I was doing, but also because of its very nature. It was and still is always changing. One day you log on and the clouds look different. Another day, harvestable plants appear. The Creator writes code for electrical wiring and suddenly your entire base is broken. A tornado grabs you and whips you into the sky.
A few months back I saw someone reminiscing on reddit about “back when the game first launched and there were goddamn spiders everywhere.” What, no way! All that time I thought it was just me! Nine years on and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface; I’ve never seen a living ship or a black hole or been to the center of the universe. I’ve never taken the time to figure out how the glyph-based gate addresses work, although I do find their names breathtaking: Star Over Water! Vessel To Beyond!
Maybe someday I’ll play the main story and find out who I am and rescue Artemis and unravel the mystery of the sentinels but maybe not because this game is, to me, so so beautiful that all I ever do is explore planet after planet, insatiable, filled with awe, and paint.
Today I’m parked on a shell-strewn planet in the Rodatyern System, orbiting a single yellow sun, messing around with some white gouache for highlights — something new I’m trying. There are clouds of little glitchy butterflies hovering in the distance and I want to capture them against the dark.
In the daytime the land is khaki, the sky is granny smith apple green. The only sound comes from the wings of the bugs; otherwise it is all silence and stillness, hills dotted with shells, some gold, some a mottled teal and navy. Here and there a taller rocky tendril reaches skyward. I stay long enough to fill a quick corner in my sketchbook and then launch back into space.
There’s so much out there I want to show you, reader, you just will not believe. Stay tuned for all the hot pink wonders of the known universe, all the sky worms and sentient plants, the red seas and acid yellow skies, and whatever else they dream up next.
adventures 
Leave a comment