I open Notepad (on a Windows PC) and start working on an idea. It’s like a puzzle to fit the characters together in a way that creates an image.

Some inspiration comes from searching for images or those I find. I look for clean lines so it will be easier to adjust when I need to figure out the spaces, characters, slopes for lines, and so on.

The font you work with makes a difference. Notepad uses FixedSys (or one of the newer offshoots). I seldom like how ASCII art looks when it is shown in another font. Courier and others use a thinner line which makes the ASCII art seem washed out. Plus, even though they are monospaced, the lines in columns don’t match up exactly the same.

I know some people would make a pattern or sketch and tape it to their monitor. So the ASCII art would be like filling in the lines (connecting the dots). I’ve never done that. Most often I have a general idea and add some characters, sit back a bit and see how things are shaping up as I go along.

Don’t delete a bunch of stuff and start over too often. Sometimes just adding a bit of detail will pull the whole image together. Circles and curves are one of the hardest things to work with, especially if you make a smaller ASCII art image. Close lines, like trying to make fingers for a hand, are pretty much impossible unless you make a bigger image or settle for a hand with just three fingers. I avoid hands and just have people holding things. This works well cause it adds more details to the image and explains what it was meant to be.

I don’t use any alt characters. ASCII isn’t about anything but the standard keyboard characters. You can do a lot with lines and dashes but I find a way to use numbers and letters too. It seems a bit bare without them.

• via my post to Quora – What is the process of making ASCII art?

I have wanted to build an archive of ASCII art for years. I have masses of text files with ASCII art collected in files, some of it I even began trying to sort out. However, it is a much bigger and messier project than I expected. To start with, how do you sort it all out so people can find it? By original artist would be nice but – it is hard to be sure who the original artist is in many cases and I don’t think many people would be searching by artist since most have no idea who they were anyway.

Anyway, I create my own ASCII art. I began in 1998 with the newsgroups which are now a part of Google. Thank you to Google for preserving those old newsgroups – they even kept them current so you can continue making posts as if nothing has changed. But, the newsgroups changed and most people moved on when the spam over loaded the content.

I knew Joan Stark, Llizard, Veronika, Hayley and many others from those newsgroup days of alt.ascii-art (I may not have that exactly right, it’s been a long time). Joan Stark became a mystery, she just disappeared one day. I have tried to track her down but no luck. Llizard and Hayley I did find and have sent notes the odd time.

But, the old days of ASCII art are gone. It isn’t used in email signatures now. Email became HTML and stuck with that. I protested at the time. It was doomed by marketing – people wanted to use HTML to spam email better. So they did, still do. But, I still have my email set to text only just to spite them all. Small and meaningless revenge makes me feel a tiny bit better.

ASCII art is not completely dead. It is sadly not always what I would call ASCII art. I will never think of mechanically produced text art pictures as true ASCII art. If you did not pick and choose each letter, number and character to create your picture then you don’t have ASCII art. Anyone can scan a picture into text – that doesn’t make it art just a copy of the original. You rely on the software to do all the work and software can’t replace a human who is less than perfect but can see things with emotion and use their intelligence to make unique choices. Machines lack that feature, so far.

Why am I putting up this site after all this blabbing about ASCII art…? I want to show my own work and I want to promote ASCII art as a whole. I don’t want ASCII art to fall off the sidelines into history as some dorky, geeky fad that time forgot. I don’t like to see people mock it (that includes the computer produced art versus the human produced art). I want to see the ASCII artists remembered along with the art they created.

Is that too much to ask? Probably not. But, it is a pretty big project to take on. Wish me luck!

You can read more about me and my other posts for the WordPress Blogging 101 challenge and my other sites.

Get your name, your blog title or anything else in ASCII art script writing. Just use the font labelled script on the site.

I Like Making ASCII Art

Maybe you have seen ASCII art and didn't know what it was.

I make pictures using my computer keyboard - the characters of the keyboard, the text letters, punctuation marks and the numbers too. I enjoy ASCII art. Working with text to make a picture instead of words is like a puzzle, trying to fit the pieces into the right places and finding which text characters work best in which spaces.

I always thought I couldn't draw so ASCII art became my outlet to put images from my mind into something I could show in print. (Because no one else can see all the stuff in your head).

My Experience as an ASCII Artist - 1996 to Current

For me, ASCII art began in 1996 when I was new online and noticed amazing work done in keyboard text and used as signatures in email and online forums. I had to search to find the actual name, ASCII art. Those were the pre-Google days. I actually found it by asking someone on a website which was a one man project. I wish I still had the link so I could give credit to him. But, I don't even know if the site is still active, or even still online.

My first ASCII art was a house with a tree and other touches added in. It wasn't any house in particular so I had the freedom to create it however I liked. It did not turn out as well as I hoped. I was glad to have completed something in ASCII art myself but it wasn't something I was going to show off.

In 1998 I found a group of ASCII artists on the newsgroups. You can still find those newsgroups, they were eventually taken over (and the archives kept) by Google. Take a look at Google Groups, search for ASCII art and you will find two groups in the alt and rec sections. There are actually even more ASCII art groups if you look for those in German and other European languages. Now and then I use a translator online because there is some really great ASCII art in those groups too.

I met several artists in 1998. My early attempts were given fair critics, some suggestions and only a little snickering behind the computer screens where I couldn't see it. Joan Stark became famous for her ASCII art in those days. But, there were so many others who had wonderful ASCII art too. Joan was the most prolific and later, the most broken hearted as more and more of her ASCII art was stolen - credit for the work ripped off or claimed by someone else.

For a few years in between the late 1990's and about 2010 I dropped out of making ASCII art myself. Most of the people from the group were also winding down. Our newsgroup was plagued with spam, our art was being stolen, some was taken to be coloured by people using IRC (Internet Relay Chat) but they also took the credit for our work off and claimed it was their work because they had changed it so much. Another problem was someone who took the art and perverted it into obnoxious jokes and then posted it to the group just to aggravate everyone. Myself, I was disheartened when a set of jack-o-lanterns I created was ripped off - a woman in Australia claimed them as her own. She even posted them to the ASCII art newsgroup and asked everyone what they thought of her great ASCII work.

At the end of 2010 something sparked in me and I once again took up ASCII art, just for myself. I had enjoyed it so much when I was just creating something for myself and then showing and getting feedback, tips and encouragement in the group. Almost no one was left from the group and I have only tracked down a few of them since 2010. But, I found it didn't matter. My skill had somehow improved over the years, even though I had done almost nothing.

I began making ASCII art for holidays, like Christmas and Halloween and some which had very little (to none) ASCII art - like Groundhog Day. It became fun again and I didn't mind working alone.

Lately I have been getting requests for ASCII art. I didn't put my name out there so it was nice to be asked for something special. I have made ASCII art for a print literary magazine. They offered to pay but never did, so I won't be mentioning their name. The rest has been freebie work and at least it's honest freebie work. I have created ASCII art for a text based game and have a 'contract' to work on larger images for another game which wants ASCII art backgrounds. I've also created ASCII art for family events like a friend's wedding, the birth of my sister's first baby and my nephew, Zack, who started living on his own while attending his first year of university.

Doing More With ASCII Art

ASCII art in itself is nice but you can do things with the ASCII art you create. I've got a list of things you may not have thought of.

• ASCII Art in HTML Source Code Now and then if you look at the source code (the HTML code) of websites you can find ASCII art. Its like a secret surprise for those who dig a little deeper.

• ASCII Art as Image Tags If you know what the alt image tags are (and where they are) you could give this a try.

• Passwords in ASCII Art One line ASCII art can be used as a unique password.

• Word Play with ASCII Art Rebus Puzzles, also known as Wordies can be created with ASCII art.

It’s funny that ASCII art is still around, still popular at holidays. I started making ASCII art in 1998. I was active in the newsgroup for ASCII art then. The downfall that turned ASCII art from trendy to retro started with HTML email. It became tricky to send an email in plain ASCII text. For awhile people just used plain text, those who held on to their simple email that didn’t need graphics and scripts. Now you have to ask for plain text, if it’s even an option. I don’t think people realize all that HTML costs them bandwidth and adds to the cost of the Internet they use.

Anyway, I started making my own ASCII art again. I’ve kept most of the old art I made. A few got lost along the way. Today I found a ship in the bottle which I had forgotten about. It was on another site. Still had my initials, my artist credit with it. Nice to find it with those.

The ASCII Art Dictionary

ASCII Picture Collections

Heart and Soul ASCII Art Gallery

Christopher Johnson's ASCII Art Collection

ASCII Art Gallery.com

ASCII World

Sunny Spot Gallery

ASCII Mailer -- Send an ASCII art picture in email. Here is a list of places you can still find collections of ASCII art, done by various artists at various times. For an updated list check my links.