Gidday.
This is your captain speaking.
I’d like to, uhh, welcome all passengers
aboard Two Ruru for a painting inspired by
Flight Simulator 2020 and the classic box
art of flight simulators of yore.
Please note that the "subscribe" sign has
been switched on, and if you're enjoying yourself,
please do feel free to go ahead and click
it.
So fasten your safety belts and be ready for
occasional pockets of turbulence and other
flight-related cliches as we climb into today's
painting.
In the unlikely event of a crash, please turn
your computer off and on again.
In an emergency, masking tape will fall from
the ceiling.
Tape it to your painting and we’ll get started
by delicately spurting some creamy white all
over the face of the canvas and then artfully
smearing with this round boi.
Wait for this sticky white mess to double-enten-dry,
then carefully mount your canvas back on the
easel, and ruin it by getting grub on it with
your first paint-stroke.
We've now reached our cruising altitude of
69,420 feet.
From this *nice* *high* altitude, you can
see that the mask is roughly in the shape
of an airplane cockpit, a term that gets weirder
and weirder the more you think about it.
Cockpit.
It sounds like Australian slang, or something
you’d get in trouble for saying at school,
so let’s ignore that, and concentrate on
painting a beautiful sunset.
Blue up your sky and then beat the devil out
of the brush for the camera.
Normally I do this offscreen and here’s
why: I’ve liberally spattered my canvas.
But it’s just a happy little turbulence.
Brush it off lightly and carry on.
This is Blu-tack(TM), which is useful in cases
of when your canvas is too small for your
easel.
With the canvas held a bit more firmly in
place, let’s get cracking on some sunlit
cumulonimbus clouds, starting with a base
colour of burnt sienna, more accurately known
as baby-poo brown.
Augment the clouds with some pastel pinks,
artfully lit from the bottom, and then give
them a nice gentle fluffing.
With that done, let’s ruin them by adding
too much purple.
To distract you from this gathering storm,
I’d like to direct your attention to our
in-flight movie: footage of Flight Simulator
2020 created by YouTuber and simulator enthusiast
Squirrel.
Well before Flight Simulator was released,
I knew I wanted to do a painting based on
it, because a game that can literally simulate
any landscape in the entire world really couldn't
be any more in my wheelhouse, or, um, cockpit.
So I reached out to Squirrel to find out if
I could use an image from one of his preview
videos as a basis for a painting, and he generously
said "yes."
Unfortunately, a few elements of my painting
ended up taking me a lot longer than I'd planned,
and by the time I was finished, the game had
been out for several weeks.
That's OK, because it means I've had the chance
to play it, and what a game it is: the entire
world and every aerial landscape in it, simulated,
in high-definition, all running at a blistering
20 frames per second, on my not entirely high
end PC.
So what IS Flight Simulator 2020?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines flight
as "the act, manner or power of passing through
the air," and "simulator" as "a person or
thing that simulates," and "2020," as, variously,
"the seventh circle of hell, or the Great
Tribulation, or the calendar equivalent of
opening a refrigerator expecting to find food
and instead it’s full of live f***ing spiders".
This year, for many people, flying - and travel
- became impossible, so a game that allows
you to come close to both couldn't be more
timely.
And for all that the game is obviously about
flying its visuals are almost entirely concerned
with the land: it might more accurately be
called Microsoft Ground Simulator.
So let’s simulate some land ourselves with
the palette knife and a bit of judicious brushwork.
In this painting, I’m attempting to incorporate
inspiration from the cockpit footage you’ve
just seen and my own footage of flying out
of a perfectly-rendered Queenstown, in the
south island of New Zealand.
And it really is spectacular.
Like many games these days Flight Simulator
might have been created to make artists feel
inadequate: more than ever before I feel like
the literally planet-sized landscape they’ve
rendered on the fly - ha, see what I did there
- is far more beautiful and evocative than
anything I could make myself.
It’s enough to make you want to get into
a career pushing pixels instead of paint.
I mean, Flight Simulator manages to make Bing
Maps relevant.
If that’s not high art, I don’t know what
is.
All that aside, this really is the game 2020
needed, if only to prove that in this, the
first of probably many hellish years to come,
we still can have nice things.
There’s a real joy in the detail, the way
that you can spend an entire trip carefully
monitoring painstakingly-crafted instruments
while incidentally taking in the stunning
scenery.
Whew.
All you ever actually do in the game is fly
from A to B but, unlike real flying — where
all you’re really interested in is trying
to get some sleep in between in-flight movies
and crying children — this really is more
about the journey than the destination.
And speaking of destinations, we’re getting
close to arriving at ours.
So lift up the window blinds to reveal mystified
mountains, a distant lake (or ocean) - and
now we’ll whack in some low-lying cloud
and fluff it up good with the big ol’ two
inch brush.
Then we’ll pop a setting sun into the sky
— there we go — and add a reflection,
and… yeah, I reckon we’re done!
Except, of course, for a fairly important
part: Taking off our mask.
I’m gonna do this while forgetting that
oil paint takes a really long time to dry
and getting it all over my hands.
But, like a lot of accidents, it’s nothing
that can’t be fixed with a couple of paper
towels.
So we’ll just carefully peel off the last
of the masking, taking care not to drop the
...argh, cockpit.
OK, we’ll just try that again, taking extra
care this time not to…
Oh no!
And there you go.
Despite a couple of minor crashes I’ve managed
to stick the landing.
And what’s more, through the magic of editing,
we’ve hidden the fact that under that mask
lurked a fully rendered… [stammering] cockpit…
you know what, I’m just going to say flight
deck.
Either way, it took me about two weeks to
paint, and if you wait to the end, you’ll
be able to see an additional reason why.
So, uhh, that brings us to the end of our
journey.
As always, thanks for flying with Two Ruru,
and we hope to see you next time.
