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I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

dougmacdowell.com

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Re: I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

#21

Post by jansan »

card_zero wrote: post #11

This should be a competitive sport, like gymnastics. He's attempting the bevel! With extra-wide lines! Very ambitious, but unfortunately he often fails to stick the corner alignments, the bevel distances are poorly controlled, and the data is unsuitably spiky for that choice of line joint. 7/10.

When you say bevel, do you mean the miter limit?

Re: I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

#22

Post by Daub »

I teach digital art and am also a painter. When I was a student I loved filling sketchbooks with drawings - like a collection of ideas. To a large degree my web bookmarks and screen grab library have taken over this function. That being said, if I want to quickly communicate visual ideas to students or craftsmen I much prefer a paper and pencil. It feels so much more nuanced, comfortable and expressive.

Re: I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

#23

Post by jinnyto »

Amazing process (such patience in this day and age!), and special thanks for sharing links to the data viz books! Tufte was my gateway too but I didn’t think to look into books on technical sketching, engineering drawing, and draftsmanship.

Love hand-drawn viz, recently I’ve been looking at the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and they have a great collection of all their reports, from pre-1900s to now. I especially appreciate this beautiful one about people with mental illness in the Seine department… from 1889. The typography is chef’s kiss https://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52510983q/f49.item...

(After years of reading Hacker News this post motivated me to finally make an account and upvote. Data viz is so fun)

Re: I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

#25

Post by JKCalhoun »

I (perhaps mistakenly) saw the article as metaphor.

50 hours to draw a line graph vs. a few minutes trying various styles in PowerPoint.

Stop letting machines make graphs, pay a draftsman like we used to do!

(I'm fairly dense though, so I probably completely missed that the author was instead simply espousing the joys of learning a new handicraft.)

Re: I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

#27

Post by selimthegrim »

jansan wrote: post #21
card_zero wrote: post #11

This should be a competitive sport, like gymnastics. He's attempting the bevel! With extra-wide lines! Very ambitious, but unfortunately he often fails to stick the corner alignments, the bevel distances are poorly controlled, and the data is unsuitably spiky for that choice of line joint. 7/10.

When you say bevel, do you mean the miter limit?

Wait until you hear about compulsory figures in figure skating.

Re: I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph

#30

Post by georgeburdell »

malshe wrote: post #29

Fantastic article! Reminded me of my favorite engineering drawing class from the undergrad days.

I ended up dropping my drawing class because I kept getting docked points for my handwriting no matter how much I practiced. I think I was on track for a B or C.
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