Category: 03-PlotterSkimming

Tyler Hobbs note to align and trim the plot after you finish it makes a lot of sense. I think I will add alignment dots to aid with the cutting on my plots.

These takeaways come from Tyler Hobbs and Licia He

1. I didn’t really consider the potential challenges of making a large drawing – Hobbs points out that breaking down a drawing into smaller drawings like tiles can allow for the creation of something large.
2. I’m really interested in the mechanics of paint plotting. It seems that Licia’s methodology is to just immerse herself in the work and be as prolific as possible. She makes a lot of experiments with her materials.

I find it interesting, especially as described in “300 Days of Plotting”, that one of the popular metrics of success in plotting is adding personality. That often can translate in adding spontaneity, disorder, or imperfection. I wonder if an artist’s character develops with consistent and constrained spontaneity or imperfection.

1. The media consideration from Tyler Hobb's article was very insightful because it provides concrete examples of how and where different pen types/ paper types can work with plotters. The painting example was really cool as well.

2. I also found the convex-hull algorithm from Matt Deslauriers to be quite interesting. I think probably what I found most useful from these skimmings is exposure to different kinds of plots and which ones feel generic and which seem original.

I liked Licia He’s ideas about the benefits of developing one’s own toolkit. Knowing exactly how everything is done and how it can be extended I think is an underrated quality in a tool set.

The Licia He article was particularly delightful. I resonated with the the “finding your way back” section, since sometimes these n day challenges can feel more like forcing out art than creating it. A theme I see across the articles is artists experimenting with process to find what toolkits allow themselves to express their ideas with the least friction.

I really liked Licia He’s article. One thing in particular that stuck out to me was the mentality of repetition and habit building that she acquired by doing her 300+ days of plotter art, and how she connected this mentality to the iteration and discipline inherent in plotter art itself. To get better at making a robot do a lot of precise tasks over and over again, you have to hone your skills by waking up and deciding to make art over and over again, and the parallelism of those acts was not lost on me.

In reading Tyler Hobb’s article 9 Tips to Execute Generative Art With a Plotter, I learned that he applies a “sorting algorithm” to increase the efficiency of plotting time, which I think is really interesting and another factor to consider when creating generative art with Axi-Draws.

In the reading “Pen Plotter Art & Algorithms”, by Matt Deslauriers, I found the convex-hull module to be a helpful tool used to create polygons, where it draws them based on a data set of points. I will definitely try this out and experiment with the convex-hull module in creating recursive drawings. 

I think the Fogleman article was very interesting because instead of talking about the process of creating drawings to plot, the article focused on how to order to paths even reducing it to TSP which I thought was cool. I’m not sure how much of plotting in this class will involve actually setting up the paths/if it was already preprepared but it was just insightful to know more.

Learning about paper is the new thing that I took from skimming the articles. So far I’ve been using printer or parchment paper (scandalous) so reading that I should use smooth, thick paper might change my plots for the better.