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So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

lostpixels.io

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Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#71

Post by sleepybrett »

mattdesl wrote: post #23
NelsonMinar wrote: post #7

I love plotter art and have dabbled a bit myself. The really fun part is how pen-on-paper is not completely reliable or a perfect line. You get a little texture if the pen skips. You can use watercolor pens that bleed. You can get crazy with something like Copic markers on Yupo paper so the whole thing stays wet and smears for minutes. It's part of the art. This bit from the article made me laugh ruefully though: "it…

A lot of it comes down to which pens you happen to have - I’ve had some success with Sakura gelly rolls for white, and also more recently have been enjoying sharpie creative acrylic markers which has a moderately opaque white ink. I’ve also had some really frustrating experiences with some other pens and instruments!

Get some platinum preppys and some 'converters' (they both cost about $7, but the converter means that changing out inks is much less of an issue) and the whole world of fountain pen inks is your oyster... and there are some really interesting inks out there.

Also an interesting instrument that i've played with. Japanese refillable brush pens. You can get a really fine line out of them if you position them just right and great flow. One of the toolheads I built for my custom plotter uses a stepper instead of a hobby servo for pen lift (originally just so i didn't have to hear those little gears grind and for reliability) and i've been working on code so that I can vary the 'z' over the course of a line for use with brushpens.

White is tough, and I've never found a white ink that doesn't just fuck up a fountain pen... sakura gelly rolls are really the best that i've used, and even they can be testy.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#72

Post by sleepybrett »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #8

I always thought of plotters as legacy tech, but considering the variety of marking tools you can attach to the head, I'm wondering if I should get one. Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?

A typical filament 3d printer is just a pen plotter with a fancy toolhead and an extra fancy 'pen up'. ( I explained to a friend once that a pen plotter is doom (2.5d) and a 3d printer is quake). Hell a laser cutter is just a pen plotter with a pen you turn off instead of lifting.

Doesn't seem so 'legacy' to me.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#73

Post by sleepybrett »

pimlottc wrote: post #49
NelsonMinar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AxiDraw from Evil Mad Scientist was what a lot of us were buying a few years ago. He's now part of Bantam Tools and is making a thing called the NextDraw. Same design but better built and a lot more expensive. https://bantamtools.com/collections/bantam-tools-nextdraw There's a world of cheaper unbranded Chinese plotters that folks are using that seem to work well. Quality does matter, you want something very precise…

Looks like the Bantam Tools ones start at just under a thousand. How much were the AxiDraw units originally?

I think I paid a little over 700 for mine a few years back.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#74

Post by sleepybrett »

acomjean wrote: post #36
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #8

I always thought of plotters as legacy tech, but considering the variety of marking tools you can attach to the head, I'm wondering if I should get one. Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?

I thought “evil mad science” had an inexpensive one. Including one the would pen plot on eggs. (Not available) https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/171 And a 2d minimalist plotter. https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/846 They seem to have been bought. Those pro plotters look nice though quite pricy. The page still has good resources. https://www.evilmadscientist.com/

The Bantam 'Next Draw' is what EMS used to sell. I bet it probably still uses the same board as the eggbot to drive it. Their new ones in a frame are cool, but one of the cool things with the nextdraw style is that you can plot on things that you can't fit in the frames.

I've used my axidraw to plot on floors and walls in the past.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#75

Post by moebrowne »

xnx wrote: post #9

Classic plotter art as performance art video: https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_schachter_how_i_turned_frus... After rewatching that, I did a one-shot remake in p5js: https://g.co/gemini/share/b983a93e3ae2 Is there actual plotter simulation software I could be using?

For converting images to plots there is this: https://mitxela.com/plotterfun/

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#76

Post by TomWhitwell »

Harold Cohen was a British painter in the ‘60s who ended up in the Stanford AI lab in 1971, using plotters (and initially turtle robots) to draw images created by a chunk of code he called AARON. There are some bits of that code - particularly the ‘freehand line algorithm’ and its collision detection allowing lines to meet without crossing - that I can’t really understand how they worked on such primitive hardware & software: https://www.katevassgalerie.com/blog/harold-cohen-aaron-comp...

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#77

Post by jamiek88 »

snoman wrote: post #45
coldcode wrote: post #42

I only make art designed to be printed on 10-12 color large format inkjet printers. Making plotter art is not inherently better or worse that printing, it's just a different type of art. I love what people do with plotters, but I just prefer doing printed versions, since what I make is often not possible with a plotter, as I deal in pixels (up to 200+ megapixels), and plotters deal in vectors. It's like Photoshop vs…

I’m sure you know this but it took me entirely too long to really understand and feel the satisfaction of taking and printing my own photos. It’s very accessible these days to have a finished piece of art that’s all yours - even with little artistic ability.

Are there decent at home photos printers nowadays? I was always underwhelmed with the old inkjet soggy paper prints.

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#78

Post by ljf »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #8

I always thought of plotters as legacy tech, but considering the variety of marking tools you can attach to the head, I'm wondering if I should get one. Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?

As a side note, I bought an Aliexpress $25 'hanging arduino plotter' - I was never able to get good results from it sadly - though I felt a learnt a lot from it and scratched the plotter itch that I had.

I'd also be very interested in a 'good' cheapish plotter - to try a few things that I was never able to with the extra low quality one that I bought

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#79

Post by rob74 »

The difference is that (almost) everyone has a printer, and a printer is only any good if it reproduces the image it prints exactly - and where's the fun in that? With plotters, you can do all the cool things described in the article, plus they have the advantage of being much more exotic, kind of like the LCD monitor sitting on your desk vs. the vector display used for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)

Re: So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?

#80

Post by coldcode »

mikestaas wrote: post #69
coldcode wrote: post #42

I only make art designed to be printed on 10-12 color large format inkjet printers. Making plotter art is not inherently better or worse that printing, it's just a different type of art. I love what people do with plotters, but I just prefer doing printed versions, since what I make is often not possible with a plotter, as I deal in pixels (up to 200+ megapixels), and plotters deal in vectors. It's like Photoshop vs…

Good stuff! Those would make nice textiles too.

I had a shirt from a piece made at Printful, but it's way too small (even at XXXL) for a normal person. It is cool to see though. I wish I could find a tailor who actually makes dress shirts, and have the fabic made at Spoonflower.
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