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80-year-old Tatsuo Horiuchi from Japan is known all around the world for his incredible drawing skills. However, he doesn’t use pencils, pens, or paint for his art. Instead, he creates masterpieces in Microsoft Excel!
Around 20 years ago, before retiring, Horiuchi thought that he needed a new challenge in his life. So he settled on painting. However, he didn’t want to spend money on art supplies—he decided to use his PC. But he didn’t go for any fancy digital drawing software either and opted for Excel.
If you enjoyed Horiuchi’s art, you can order one of his paintings on his website right here. You can find his email address there, too, if you want to say a quick ‘hello’ or ask him to share his PC wisdom with you. Meanwhile, scroll down, enjoy Horiuchi’s paintings, and let us know in the comments which ones were your favorite, dear Pandas!
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Tatsuo Horiuchi has been making paintings using Microsoft Excel for around 20 years
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
He draws landscapes of Japan on his computer
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Here’s what his work process looks like
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Horiuchi started learning how to draw after he retired in 2000
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
He didn’t want to buy any art supplies or digital software. So he settled for Excel
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Here are some more of his paintings
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
Image credits: Tatsuo Horiuchi
You can watch a video about Horiuchi right here
Horiuchi’s example is inspirational to a lot of people. He shows that everything is possible if you put your mind to it (though I doubt that most of us have the patience to figure out how Excel works) and that we should all continue learning new things as we grow older.
“I didn’t expect it [my painting] to improve immediately, so I made a 10-year plan,” Horiuchi told AFP.
“For the first 3 years, I concentrated on ‘drawing’ and drew all the things that could be seen, such as vegetables such as carrots and Japanese radish, and wild grass, in Excel. For the next 3 years, I practiced combining the motifs one by one to construct a painting.”
Six years after starting his Excel art journey, Horiuchi applied to an Excel Authoshape Art Contest and won the grand prize. That’s when he started getting more and more attention from people for his skills.
Since then, he has become somewhat of a legend and some of his artwork has even been acquired by the local Gunma Museum of Art.
The Japanese artist prefers Excel to Microsoft Paint because it offers more flexibility, has more functions, and is easier to use.
Social media users loved Horiuchi’s art and a lot of them were impressed that you can use Excel to draw
What do you think ?
laggy in zoom 4 years ago
He is so talented! I love how he uses all sorts of 2d drawings and then assembles it all. I love this! Especially love that his hobby is so cool, and he is very, very, good at it. I would totally buy these and put them in my room!!
Rohan Moran 4 years ago
I was expecting this to be a variation on Pointillism (i.e making each cell a individually coloured "pixel"). This is SIGNIFICANTLY more complex, hats off to the man!
Daniel (ShadowDrakken) 4 years ago (edited)
Someone needs to introduce this man to Inkscape. Sheesh. Excel's drawing tool is not very optimized, this would seriously bog down a machine. He's got the patience of a saint to put up with that XD
Monika Soffronow 4 years ago (edited)
BORED PANDA please block these accounts ASAP! 'JuliaaaTiki' and 'PeppiOnlyy'. Sex ads have no place here.
Helen Haley 4 years ago
Before I saw the video I thought he was just making the cells small and coloring by cell, how he is actually doing it would be far easier in powerpoint, so good on him for being able to do it in excel.
jknbt jknbt 4 years ago
very impressed, hard to do with photoshop, much less excel... there are websites where artists can market their art... you ought to sell these online... thanks for putting this up... excel! I am amazed...
Iapetos 4 years ago
It is none of the sorcery I know, but maybe he painted by colouring every single box individually.
Load More Replies...
Oskar vanZandt 4 years ago
What!?! I can barely use Excel to make spreadsheets and such! Mind blown...
ispeak catanese 4 years ago
Whut... How? "Good morning everyone, let's begin with the 2nd tab of the spreadsheet. Here is my crane and spoonbill collage. Beautiful! And in tab 3 is the list of problem orders we need to discuss."
Anonymous Web User 4 years ago
How is this possible? The last time I used Excel, it was for accounting and maths equations, that kind of thing.
Chelle Snail 4 years ago
Brilliant! Excel is a great program like that. Just amazing to imagine he would not have known anything about computers prior to maybe the late 90's ;) and now a Wizz pro at it. I would like to buy one of his paintings. Is there a way we can?
somnomania 4 years ago
i've never used excel, only google sheets, and i have no idea how on earth he does any of this, it's like magic
kurisutofu 4 years ago
You can say that he excels at what he does because what he does is Excel.
Pelleh Din 4 years ago
While his skill is dazzling, I am just am impressed by his artistry. He captures the style of many Japanese paintings perfectly.
Jace 4 years ago
But there are way better vector drawing tools than what’s in Excel. I’ve used Microsoft Office enough to know that it’s buggy as s**t on the lesser used features. This sounds like self abuse. The results are lovely, but I can barely tolerate tools used for their intended purpose, let alone relying on the broken s**t in tools being used slightly off developer expectation.
laggy in zoom 4 years ago
sorry about the deleted comments- messed up with spelling
Load More Replies...
mph seti 4 years ago
Because they are 2D, and created with blocks/shapes of color. Digital painting is a common term, and the only real difference between painting and drawing is that drawing focuses on linework, whereas painting focuses on planes of color/pigment.
Load More Replies...
laggy in zoom 4 years ago
He is so talented! I love how he uses all sorts of 2d drawings and then assembles it all. I love this! Especially love that his hobby is so cool, and he is very, very, good at it. I would totally buy these and put them in my room!!
Rohan Moran 4 years ago
I was expecting this to be a variation on Pointillism (i.e making each cell a individually coloured "pixel"). This is SIGNIFICANTLY more complex, hats off to the man!
Daniel (ShadowDrakken) 4 years ago (edited)
Someone needs to introduce this man to Inkscape. Sheesh. Excel's drawing tool is not very optimized, this would seriously bog down a machine. He's got the patience of a saint to put up with that XD
Monika Soffronow 4 years ago (edited)
BORED PANDA please block these accounts ASAP! 'JuliaaaTiki' and 'PeppiOnlyy'. Sex ads have no place here.
Helen Haley 4 years ago
Before I saw the video I thought he was just making the cells small and coloring by cell, how he is actually doing it would be far easier in powerpoint, so good on him for being able to do it in excel.
jknbt jknbt 4 years ago
very impressed, hard to do with photoshop, much less excel... there are websites where artists can market their art... you ought to sell these online... thanks for putting this up... excel! I am amazed...
Iapetos 4 years ago
It is none of the sorcery I know, but maybe he painted by colouring every single box individually.
Load More Replies... Oskar vanZandt 4 years ago
What!?! I can barely use Excel to make spreadsheets and such! Mind blown...
ispeak catanese 4 years ago
Whut... How? "Good morning everyone, let's begin with the 2nd tab of the spreadsheet. Here is my crane and spoonbill collage. Beautiful! And in tab 3 is the list of problem orders we need to discuss."
Anonymous Web User 4 years ago
How is this possible? The last time I used Excel, it was for accounting and maths equations, that kind of thing.
Chelle Snail 4 years ago
Brilliant! Excel is a great program like that. Just amazing to imagine he would not have known anything about computers prior to maybe the late 90's ;) and now a Wizz pro at it. I would like to buy one of his paintings. Is there a way we can?
somnomania 4 years ago
i've never used excel, only google sheets, and i have no idea how on earth he does any of this, it's like magic
kurisutofu 4 years ago
You can say that he excels at what he does because what he does is Excel.
Pelleh Din 4 years ago
While his skill is dazzling, I am just am impressed by his artistry. He captures the style of many Japanese paintings perfectly.
Jace 4 years ago
But there are way better vector drawing tools than what’s in Excel. I’ve used Microsoft Office enough to know that it’s buggy as s**t on the lesser used features. This sounds like self abuse. The results are lovely, but I can barely tolerate tools used for their intended purpose, let alone relying on the broken s**t in tools being used slightly off developer expectation.
laggy in zoom 4 years ago
sorry about the deleted comments- messed up with spelling
Load More Replies... mph seti 4 years ago
Because they are 2D, and created with blocks/shapes of color. Digital painting is a common term, and the only real difference between painting and drawing is that drawing focuses on linework, whereas painting focuses on planes of color/pigment.
Load More Replies... 
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