Tatsuo Horiuchi, an 80-year-old Japanese man, has surprised many people with his talent for painting with an unexpected application, Microsoft Excel. With computational tools, he produced masterpieces that surprised the world.
Mr. Tatsuo Horiuchi has been drawing with Microsoft Excel for more than 20 years, when he retired in 2000 with the aim of making old age less boring.
Mr. Horiuchi wants to make the most of his desktop computer, not spend money on things like paper, paintbrushes or colors. He chose Excel over other specialized software like Photoshop, or Microsoft Paint because it is more flexible, has more functions and is easier to use.
The 80-year-old man said that graphic software for drawing pictures on the computer is often quite expensive, while Microsoft Excel is available in his computer. And the Microsoft Paint application, although available in Windows, was not selected because it was too difficult to draw pictures. He found the graphs drawn from this software very beautiful from when he was at work even though he did not use the application. So he used this software to draw art pictures.
Mr. Horiuchi’s paintings depict many scenic spots in Japan and have many vivid details. But what amazes viewers is that he does not use anything but the shapes available in the insert cells of Microsoft Excel 2003 software, only thousands of tiny pieces to create beautiful pictures.
6 years after starting his artistic journey with Excel, Mr. Horiuchi won the grand prize at the Excel Autoshape Art Competition.