Finally bought a pen plotter. I have been intrigued by these since spotting Sketchy, a delta robot drawing faces at Maker Faire Newcastle in 2014. Later that year I had a go at making one, but never quite finished it. I even explored using a Kossel 3D printer as a basis for creating an arduino controlled pen plotter. But in the end procrastination got the better of me and after a chat with Dan Catt at Papercamp last September I was motivated to order a Bantam Tools NextDraw (8511) so that I could start focusing on generating line art.
The NextDraw pretty much works straight out the box so I was up and running once Inkscape was set-up.
My first print was inspired by Joy Divisions Unknown Pleasures album cover of a stacked plot of the radio emissions given out by a pulsar. I made it using Processing which will likely be my main tool for creating plots although I do have plans for some Computer Vision based drawings using Python.
The first drawings are on GitHub and I plan to try and keep publishing work in progress here.
Plot 1
The picture below has been hanging in the hallway since 2017 as a constant reminder of this project in progress! It’s a line drawing of Finn made at Brighton Maker Faire with a robot arm.
I aim to keep posting plots of the week into this folder (and on weekly blog posts). Some useful resources on getting started are listed below.
Tiny advice for “I want to make pen plotter art, help!” - Dan Catt
Robots and Generative Art and Python, oh my!
Exploring Generative Art How to Create Stunning Artwork Using Randomness