I first did b/w pixel art on macs way back in the late 20th century, and did a lot of pixel comics.  I do all kinds of art and always look for ways to do something slightly different from what everyone else is doing.  I love pixel art and have seen that most people are doing beautifully fantastic, whimsical, inventive work so I decided to try to do purely realistic 40 x 60 landscape paintings just to see if I could blow somebody's mind.  I work in GIMP and save at 200%.