The Van Gogh of Microsoft Excel: How a Japanese Retiree Makes Intricate Landscape Paintings with Spreadsheet Software

Just when you thought you’ve mas­tered Microsoft Excel–creating piv­ot tables, VLOOKUPs and the rest–you dis­cov­er the fea­ture you nev­er knew was there. The one that lets you cre­ate Japan­ese land­scape paint­ings. When Tat­suo Hori­uchi retired, he found that fea­ture and leaned on it, hard. Now 77 years old, he has enough land­scape paint­ings to stage an exhibition–all made with the point and click of a mouse.

So what’s the moral of this sto­ry? Maybe it’s you’re nev­er too old to make art. Or maybe it’s nev­er too late to mas­ter those hid­den fea­tures and push tech­nol­o­gy to the bleed­ing edge. In Tat­suo’s case, he’s doing both.

via Swiss Miss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Hand-Drawn Japan­ese Ani­me: A Deep Study of How Kat­suhi­ro Otomo’s Aki­ra Uses Light

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

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Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints