Come Paint With Us in the Alien Art Gallery of 'Joy Exhibition'

Above screenshot courtesy of Strangethink. All images below by Austin Walker.

Today we are going to take a brief step away from the stress of the world so that we can make something together.

We are going to put something into the world, and it will remain there in some capacity. Do you paint? You're about to paint. You're going to do amazingly.

Here is what you need: five to ten minutes. That is the amount of time it will take us to make something. We are collaborating with Strangethink today, so you also need: a copy of their game Joy Exhibition, which you can download for free on Mac, PC or Linux. It doesn't matter where you are or who you're with. I am in a coffee shop in a mall next to the currency exchange.

Joy Exhibition is a game about creating art for a community of mute aliens. Step through the central doorway into your studio: On the walls behind you are a variety of procedurally generated paintguns. If you want to switch out a paintgun, click the button below it.

Alright. Now. Let's start with a simple prompt. And to prove that it's easy, I've enlisted Waypoint editor-in-chief Austin Walker to follow his own paintings to match my prompts. (A tip for painters joining us on the Mac, if you save your pictures, you can right-click on the game application and choose "show package contents" to locate them.)

Prompt #1: Paint a landscape that you have always wanted to visit.

Take as much or as little time as you need. When the painting is finished, back out of the studio and watch as it appears in one of the frames. Strangethink's games are full of magic tricks like these; their landscapes are playful and fickle. Doesn't the landscape look good in its frame?

Back into the studio. There's more painting to be done. Like Austin, you could do all of these, or maybe pick one or two to do and show us what you've painted over on Twitter.

Prompt #2: Paint your city today. Don't neglect the details.

Prompt #3: Paint a still life of every object you've ever intentionally broken. Neglect the details.

Prompt #4: Paint a portrait of Sarla Thakral, the first Indian woman to fly an aircraft. She was 21. 

Prompt #5: Paint the interior of the world's largest bank. The fire can be any colour.

Prompt #6: Paint a self portrait, and then cover the canvas in a single color, and then paint it again.

Prompt #7: Paint a portrait of the elderly woman who just approached me to ask which of her headphones was LEFT and which was RIGHT.

Prompt #8 Paint a forgery of your favorite piece of art. It should be indistinguishable from the original. (For Austin, it's Dali's Athens is Burning!)

Prompt #9: Paint the storm approaching the house on the cliff.

Prompt #10: Paint your city tomorrow.

As you step out of the studio, you will notice that the gallery is full. Aliens stand before each of the paintings, silently. Take a tour.

At first, I neglected the door out of the gallery. It was as if I did not notice it was there. But once the frames had been filled, I stepped outside into another circular hallway. For a moment, I thought this was a second gallery—that the spaces for paintings stretched infinitely—but I quickly realised that I was looking at windows, not frames. The view outside surprised me: rolling, pastel coloured hills moved below. The landscapes changed.

The gallery we made is always moving. So are we.

You can download Joy Exhibition for free here. If you want to show us the art we made together, my twitter account is @notquitereal, Austin's is @austin_walker, and Waypoint's is @waypoint.