Tatsuo Horiuchi, an 79-year-old artist from Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, prefers using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets over actual paint to create his masterpieces. Horiuchi didn’t want to spend money on art supplies so he started to use Excel to create art after seeing others using the program at work. How does it work? The Autoshape function is mainly used to form the images and then custom colored shapes are layered to weave together an intricate image. Read more for a video and additional information.
Believe it or not, he even tried using Microsoft Word, but found it to be too restrictive since Excel does not have paper size limits. These days, he does it more for fun, but early one, he even won a few competitions, including first prize at the Excel Autoshape Art Contest in 2006.
“I never used Excel at work but I saw other people making pretty graphs and thought, ‘I could probably draw with that.’. Graphics software is expensive but Excel comes pre-installed in most computers… And it has more functions and is easier to use than [Microsoft] Paint,” said Horiuchi.
