Pixel Art on Windows (K-12) [video]

We’ve been inspired by the beautiful art many people are making on their windows with sticky notes to cheer up their neighbors as those are pixel art, and we had written a lesson for the classroom around that idea! You can use sticky notes on a window or wall to make a design. Lots of math can be involved in the design, and later you can ask the questions we asked in our pixel art lesson but applied to your own piece!

As you’re making your piece:

  • Design it on grid paper or pixel art software (such as https://www.pixilart.com/draw).
  • How many sticky notes of each color will you need?
  • How can you know how much wall/window space you will need to put up your design?
  • Or going the other way around: measure the wall/window you want to use and decide how many pixels wide/tall your design can be.

Once you’ve made it:

  • Pick one of the colors you used. Your challenge is to cover all the pixels of that color using rectangles. Your score will be the area of all the rectangles used plus the square of the number of rectangles. Try to get the lowest score possible! (See the lesson plans or video below for more details.)