Rust is a video game that deserves to be a case study for those psychology adepts, it puts lots of emphasis on survival. Its core gameplay is to gather resources, whether it's by collecting, fighting or stealing. If you would pass by a stranger, their first thoughts are often sinister as no one trusts each other.

Rust however was not a game for me, heck I did not even buy it to begin with, I won it in a fighting game tournament back when it was in its alpha, and back when I had a computer that was not capable of running it. Even after obtaining a new computer, I could not properly enjoy it on my own, and by pure accident, 2 of my people went into Rust to discover it, seeing how it had the fame of creating fun and moments of joy, moments which were very costly. Just like any PvP based survival game, enjoying the hours that you burn into gathering the resources is not free, especially since you are put in a stochastic environment: RNG seeded maps, servers populated with a wide range of people from the mushroom pickers and the pros who wall the PvP difficulty, the mechanics...etc..

I became the third of the pack, and as predicted, I had to deal with intoxicating idea of having to collect the precious metals and protecting them. By the time I started my first hours, I had no SSD, which was required to fight against the lags, something which prompted me to focus less on combat since my system was not capable of handling fast paced reactions, my role was then reduced to indoor organizing and farming the resources that we needed as a team, and in rare occasions participate in group scouting.

Although I had little impact on our growth, I still enjoyed hearing my team mates being happy about what they did despite my absence in the battle field.... Until I discovered one day that you can craft a wooden plate and put it as a decoration.

You see, the core gameplay obscured us from sighting these smaller features, "greed is good" some people said. Still, once I put one of these plates on the wall, my first thought was to use it as a label for our boxes... Until my boredom played its role and I started toying with the colour palette, which by the time was very limited for stupid reasons:

The original rust colour palette

Painting in rust was challenging, starting a session was spontaneous ,and more often than not I would have difficulties deciding on what to paint due to the limited colour palette and bad mouse tracking, and let's not forget about potential disturbance coming from the opponent players as well as my team mates if they need assistance. Ah, one last thing: Rust's painting module has no eraser, if you make one mistake, you either have to live with it or completly start over, and if you are an artist, you know where this is going...

As I kept painting and drawing, my dexterity kept improving and throughout my experiences I kept improvising. Some of these may look out of shape, though you might find some gems. Overall I am super satisfied with everything I did! The following slideshow doubles as a history of my slow self improvements.

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The very first painting, this happened back when the Guilty gear strive trailer came with a reveal of May

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Yang from Ruby

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Heracross was one of my favourite pokemons

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I ran out of ideas so I asked a friend for something to paint. Here is Mimikyu

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Hsien-Ko is one of my favourite Darkstalkers

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A discord user's avatar

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I rushed this painting of Mika from Under-night as I had to go join my team mates

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Mona Lisa

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Tesse from Waku Waku 7, someone raided my base and I had to cover something explicit, thanks Gary for not adding an eraser

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Kagari from Ikaruga has little to no artworks that I could use as a reference

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Bee!

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A rushed self portrait

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I-no from Guilty gear

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Es from the Blazblue universe

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A self portrait

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Back when Phasmophobia was famous

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Iris from Mega man X

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One of us graduated so we had to celebrate this with a painting

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A new guy joined us, temporarily

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I was working on painting neco arc until someone rushed through my doors

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I hold lots of emotional value towards this one, I worked on protecting it for 4 days a row

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I just realized that the quote does not stem from Opeth to begin with, but from Kakatonia

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I invested lots of focus on this one and I am super satisfied, especially since I could pull this off without an eraser and on the first try

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RoRo muse mode from Luminous avenger IX

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RoRo combat pod mode from Luminous avenger IX

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Kat from Advance wars

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An artwork that I am proud of

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This was done inside a cave

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Yet another rushed one

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Neco me

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Tomoko from Watamote

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Took some time, I am happy with this!

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Pucca X Snoopy

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At any rate, despite all of this, I enjoyed racking hours into this small niche of a hobby. I do recommend doing it in a proper server and not in one of those combat focused server. As of today, the only update that we could benefit from was a new colour palette, I am not sure how hard would it be for them to add an eraser, but since only a small purcent of people paint in rust, no amount of petitions would bring this feature to life.

Don't be this guy

This however did not end here, I could somehow transfer my skills and experiences to other games. In ARK: Survival Evolved, you can't officially paint on boards, you would need a server that contains a compatible plugin for that. The following is sadly the only image I could find. I will certainly try to dig for more pictures, but I suppose they are all gone:

Namielle from Monster hunter is one of my favourite monsters, at least they have an eraser in Ark

Prior to CS:GO transition to CS2, you could draw on the map, but you had a limited amount of lines to draw, attempting to increase their length will result into the other end being wiped. Post some CS2 updates, you are no longer hindered by this as long as you are in spectator mode. Sadly no eraser is available because this feature was intended for demonstrative purposes I believe. In casual play, I often challenge myself to draw as fast as I can before a new round starts. It's a fun challenge that sort of hones your drawing skills slowly.

So far I could only make these two beauties.

The premise is that, if the game offers me a way to sketch, I just do it and attempt to fight through all restrictions. Maybe someone has to make a list of all the games where drawing is a feature that exists outside the scope of the core gameplay.