Microsoft Paint has always fascinated us. We remember it from our first times using a computer, this little feature there to draw stuff (badly) and marvel at your lack of artistic skill.
MS Paint has been around since 1985 and is still available on computers with Windows. It’s a simple raster graphics editor, but one that many tens of millions have messed around on at one time or another. Thusly, we wish to celebrate with an ode to drawing with a mouse.
MS Paint’s Historical Arc of Fun and Nostalgia
Our earliest memory of this was at high school in 1996, during IT class painting the menu screen from the SNES’s Yoshi’s Island and thinking it looked great. In our minds now it looked great (it probably looked real bad FYI). Many IT lessons of that era involved lots of students ignoring their teacher in favour of doodling in Paint.
Despite being very simplistic compared to tools like Photoshop, it’s also very free and easy to use.
We use it often here on Professional Moron, whether to change an image into jpeg format or remove a few blemishes from a picture. It’s easy-to-use and pretty indispensable.
Prior to starting this blog in late 2011, we had an incredible creative urge to start doing something with the thoughts going on in our brains (if you know, you kn0w). We cobbled the below together in Paint as part of a letter we sent off to some old uni friends, even going as far as to print the thing off.
That type of thing has been around since it was adapted from ZSoft’s PC Paintbrush.
Dan McCabe launched it with Windows 1.0 in November 1985, featuring 24 tools and monochrome graphics. As the years ticked by and we got the likes of Windows ’95, marketed as it was by Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston at peak Friends fame.
Those two went on to do a full video guide for Microsoft… yes, that’s available online, too. They did it all in character as Rachel and Chandler.
With these updates MS Paint became slightly more advanced, shifting into full colour and offering a wider variety of tools. That includes the legendary Airbrush, which we always had a lot of fun with as it was like being a graffiti artist maniac.
The 2025 version keeps the minimalistic appeal, but there are way more features than the days of Windows 1.0.
But are people still using it in this era of TikTok and selfies? Yes. In part as for many users it brings with it that cosy nostalgic factor. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember how the software helped enliven a dull lesson in 1997 at high school (or some such).
That explains the CHAOS that followed in the wake of…
THE 2017 MICROSOFT PAINT HORROR CRISIS
It seems unfeasible now, but back in July 2017 the Windows 10 update of that summer planned to kill off the software. As noted by The Guardian in Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years:
“Paint was never one of the most capable apps, and was limited to the bitmap (BMP) and PCX formats until 1998, but if you wanted to scribble something out using your mouse or make a quick cut and paste job, Paint was always there, even on work computers.
The most recent version of Paint for Windows 7 and later was much improved, but still considered feature poor compared to other free alternatives such as the third-party Paint.NET.
When Microsoft Paint will officially be removed from Windows has yet to be confirmed, while a precise date for the release of the Windows 10 Autumn Creators Update is equally up in the air. Whether, like Clippy, Windows users will celebrate or decry Paint’s removal, it will be a moment in the history of Windows as one of its longest-standing apps is put out to pasture.”
Unlike the paper clip Clippy, who used to plague Word and was HATED BY ALL, after it became clear Paint was on its way out there was bedlam. Online across social media there was an explosion of disbelief and barely contained fury—the demand was to keep the tool where it belonged.
The company promptly folded and stated it’d remain a free app on its store. Long may its reign continue!
Tribute to the MS Paint Artists Who Are Really, Really Good
The likes of Christian Young, a digital artist, have taken to older versions of the tool to create some very impressive work. He does these live on Twitch as people watch and comment.
He does a lot of classic art style landscapes (think along the lines of the German genius Caspar David Friedrich), with that pixel art style twist that’s rather impressive.
The software is perhaps notorious for its low-quality art as a doodle procrastinator tool, but that hasn’t stopped some talented people from getting really good at MS Paint.
Young is one example, another is Pat Hines. He’s been featured in PRINT Magazine and the popular Vox culture and news site. This video interview including snippets of his work is intriguing.
The online community supporting the tool is considerable. There’s a Reddit forum dedicated to it with 226,000 users and plenty of other digital artists creating interesting work.
MS Paint as of Windows 11
You’re likely using Windows 11 if you have a Microsoft OS (operating system). If that’s the case, you’re USING THE MOST ADVANCED VERSION of this legendary software ever.
Microsoft Paint as it stands now has some fancy features, including the inevitable AI-powered tools to make your life as a creative increasingly redundant:
“Paint now comes with new AI-powered tools to help you edit images like a pro and create art like a visionary. Included in the latest version of Windows 11, Paint is your new creative partner.”
This is in the form of Image Creator, which will create any old image just by typing in an AI prompt. We’d been using this elsewhere on Microsoft, but we’re still not sure if it’s legal to publish the results online (copyright etc.). From our research you can’t, but it’s not stopping many social media users. How would Microsoft regulate this on a global scale? Sue everyone!?
Regardless, it’s still a fun little thing to mess around with.
And the software will continue on for many years to come. 1,000 years from now? Here’s hoping.
