Made In MacPaint

Earlier this year Apple released the source code to MacPaint – the revolutionary graphics program that originally came with the first Macintosh computers in 1984.

My parents had purchased one of the original 512k Macs then, so I was lucky enough to get to play around with it. When I heard that the source code to MacPaint had been released, I decided to dig up some of the old things I had created with it.

These were made during the period of 1987 – 1989 using MacPaint.

Reproduced from line art of a space shuttle in an ad I found at the back of a magazine:

Just a scene with a car I drew for fun. In retrospect, that airplane is flying a bit low:

This last one reflects my early fascination with keyboards/synthesizers. I owned a lowly consumer level Casio keyboard, but dreamed of owning something like the Ensoniq VFX. I don’t recall exactly, but I must have drawn this based on some diagram in a keyboard magazine. Now that I’m all grown up, I own an Alesis Fusion 8HD keyboard, which has a lot of the sounds from keyboards I used to dream of owning (thanks to Hollow Sun and others):

Having a Macintosh with MacPaint at an early age helped me develop an interest in design and technical drawing – and for that I am grateful to Bill Atkinson and the rest of the MacPaint/QuickDraw teams.