You might be familiar with Microsoft Excel, famous spreadsheet software. You no doubt have seen it used to organise data and to display various graphs from that data. Maybe you actually use it everyday as a decision making tool.
One man saw us all use Excel this way and thought, what a waste of a useful tool. He probably thought, ‘what a bunch of uncultured peasants this whole lot is.’ He decided he would use the spreadsheet software as a painting canvas,
Yes, he paints using Microsoft Excel.
The man is one Tatsuo Horiuchi, a 77-year old Japanese illustrator. He was interviewed by Great Big Story and you can watch the video below.
Tatsuo wanted a new challenge and decided he wanted to paint. He however was not willing to pay for painting supplies or for expensive graphic software. So when he saw people draw fancy graphs using Excel he figured he could use the spreadsheet software to paint. It came pre-installed on his computer and that was the just the right price for Tatsuo.
Why did he not just use Paint? He says Excel is easier and has more functions.
Let his work do the talking.
Visit his website PASOKONGA – paintings by Tatsuo Horiuchi to view all his work.
So maybe you don’t believe him when he says he uses Excel, he has made two of his paintings available as excel documents. Here is one:
Cherry Blossoms of Historical Castle site” (2006)
It makes you realise that you indeed do not know all that you can do using Excel. We underutilise the program. This is not to say we should all paint with Excel but we could learn how to take advantage of more features than we currently use.
However I don’t think you can write, ‘proficient with Excel’ on your CV anymore.
One response
Impressive! And yes, I have taken the statement ‘proficient with excel’ from my CV.