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michael has kept up art as a hobby since he was pretty young, some of the earliest examples of enjoying this were actually based on his father's and henry's animatronics: as a kid, he used to be pretty fascinated with them, draw a bunch of them, bursting with excitement to show either of them his 'ideas,' whether it was new designs he liked to make up or collections of silly little comics. he grew more embarrassed by this the older he got, and stopped showing people his drawings, but kept up with it consistently!
he expanded the subjects of course, still keeping the cartoonish vibe but more so filling sketchbooks with lots of miscellaneous doodles. he would do this especially when he was stuck at the restaurant without any of his friends to mess around with, sketching the animatronics, decorations, and people. he keeps doing short comic-like work ( i point to the silly stylized stick figure ) and often incorporates humor, but he also ends up improving technical skills a lot too. though he doesn't deliberately practice this as much as most would recommend, he can do portraiture and anatomy pretty well ( his strengths there being the fact that he uses very loose and open strokes, so while the technical choices aren't PERFECT, his more realistic work still comes off as stylized and interesting ). he is stupidly good at animatronic and robot parts definitely from the amount of practice he's had just observing them.
he mainly uses just... pencils and pens— anything he can get his hands on rather than seeking out specific materials.
he's not a painter— michael just figures he wouldn't be any good at it, though that's more so the way he's thinking about it. he thinks he doesn't exactly have the drive to sit down for hours and meticulously craft a "real painting" ( in the heaviest of quotes ), personally i think he'd really benefit from quick-paced messy painting as an outlet.
in a similar vein, he doesn't really consider himself much of an artist because of the stereotypical connotations of the word— michael doesn't think he's really making anything worthwhile, which is why it surprises him so much when people are impressed and/or think he could pursue something creative. i am once again saying i think his art teacher was the only one he really got along with and who made him think beyond a one dimensional definition of art.
also just look at his canon doodles wahhh