Creating paintings with painting utensils

[Lookstothestars]

Hello again, i just had an idea and thought it would be neat if it was in the game. Basically, it would be really cool if you could make your own paintings in Vintage Story and hang them up around your house. I thought a little bit on how it could be implemented and came up with a few things. For starters, to truly create paintings i think you should first get to the copper age, since in my mind the ability to create the tools necessery to make paintings should be looked behind progression for a little while. Then, the first thing you would probably create would be the canvas itself. There is already a mod out there that allows you to make canvases, however, as far as i understood the mod it doesn't allow you to actually make the images in game which i think is very importent for immersion. The recipe is the same though, four boards and one linen in the middle:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point the canvas can be placed vertically on a wall or on the ground next to a wall, but when you try to paint on it, it will be unstable and regularly just collapse and turn into it's item form again, like the crude door. This doesn't happen if you put it horizontally on the ground, but obviously it will be a little weird to constantly be looking down while painting something, especially if you are trying to recreate something through in game inspiration, like a landscape you found on your travels. To actually paint though you will need a brush. The brush can be crafted by combing a stick and some flax twine with a knife in the crafting menu (the knife is there because i thought it makes more sense to first have to cut the twine into bristles for the brush):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point you can start painting, but it will be a little annoying since to you will basically have to paint near barrels of paint. I thought of a solution for this though (well, i applied a solution from real life is more correct). An palette or tray (that's what google said. Is that what it's called?). You can get some paint through any vessel, be it a bowl or a ... the other thing you make with clay (i forgor) or a bucket and within you inventory simply click right or left click, like with the cooking pot to put paint on it which will be shown when you hover over it with the mouse. The crafting recipe is simple enough, just needing a wooden board and a knife to it's right:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When painting you just put it in your off hand and the brush in your main hand and when pressing F, like you do for clay forming and smithing, you can chose the colour you want to use and also see how much of it you still have. And now for the final thing, a way to actually put up paintings so you don't have to paint them on the ground or have them constantly fall over while trying to paint on them: An easel! I haven't quite figured out what crafting recipe i would like for the easel. These two are quite similar and don't rquire many resources:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The easel i drew isn't quite of the easel i thought of when i made the crafting recipe, but the thing is, when typing easel ... there are so many different kinds of easels. I feel like sticks and boards being interchangeable in this recipe is better than adding a thousand different kinds of easels but something i would like to add would be the need to use nails and strips to make them or resin or wax. Just something that actually holds it together instead of it just working. Maybe two? One in the centre right and on in the centre left? (Small addendum: Maybe the canvas should somehow use nails and strips too since in real life the piece of cloth used to make canvases ... canvae ... whatever, is normally nailed to the boards but i feel like that would make it too expensive?)

You can then simply take a canvas and put it on the easel with right click and then continue painting with the other utensils previously described, this time though at a nice height without the fear of it falling over.

There is one thing i didn't bother drawing or making the recpie for, but historically there have been some huge paintings. Since i don't want the paintings to actually be a full-sized block i wanted to add the possibility of making bigger canvases. By simply putting two small canvases next to each other in the crafting menu you can make one 1 x 2 canvas or one 2 x 1 canvas, depending how you put them in the crafting grid. You can do that again to get everything from 4 x 4's (maximum for now) to 2 x 4's or 4 x 2's by combining them in a way that makes sense.

I'd say the amount of pixels on the canvas are the same as regular chiselable blocks in the game, but i don't remember how paintings you can buy from traders look like so if they use more pixels, well, then that. And when pressing f you should get the option to increase brush size. Well, that or more brushes and other utensils but i couldn't be bothered to make more than the base necesseties.

Japp, that's it, my idea. I don't know if it was worth to draw the PNG's of the utensils and stuff for it but hey, it got me drawing again :3

Edited May 24, 2025 by Lookstothestars

[Tom Cantine]

I like it. I've seen some nice artwork done with chiselling, but the available colours are kind of limited since you have to use blocks of stuff.

 

[Facethief]

Given that looms are on the roadmap, I think we could see a similar system for tapestries.

[Dilan Rona]

This might work. But its been a while since it was updated... https://mods.vintagestory.at/lascaux