I’m an artist and creative technologist. I write about generative art, code, creativity and other interconnected topics. You can expect a diary on Fridays sharing the things I’ve been working on. Thanks for joining me here. 💖
Hello!
I cannot get over how sunny Spring has been here in London. My mood is always massively improved by a blue sky so I’m very grateful. I’ve also been getting out running (I’m currently making my way through week 7 of the couch to 5k programme) and that’s another mood improver. Super annoying that people who bang on about exercise are right, but here we are.
In the studio, I’ve been making lots of videos and experimenting with my plotter. It’s had a couple of cracked wheels for ages, which were making detailed work tricky, but I finally got around to fixing those this week, so you can expect more handwriting plots on the way.
Of course my unique Meaningful Nonsense prints are still available for in my shop too!
Things I’ve done this week
These fluffy circles
And also this more organised option
I made screen recording while I was creating this and I’ve turned it into another one of my coding timelapses.
I’ve been thinking about releasing longer versions of these screen recordings that have the whole thing in real time, maybe with a voiceover. It would be behind some kind of paywall.
Is that something you’d be interested in? Let me know!
Watercolour Plotting
I plot with watercolours using a brush in my plotter instead of a pen. I have the watercolour palette right next to the paper and I code it so that the brush heads over to the paint and to the water tray/paper when it needs to. You can read more about my setup in this article.
This week I created an abstract piece and then experimented with having the plotter drag a wet brush through it to smudge the paint.
Here it is before the wet brush:
And after:
You can also see a timelapse of this whole piece being created on your social media of choice:
Instagram | Tiktok | Twitter | Youtube
I like both the versions but I think maybe it would be better if the wet brush only went over certain areas, and left more of the dry detail intact. I’ll experiment more!
Watercolour Plotting + Handwriting!
I also loaded up my handwriting code for the plotter again. I’ve been on a many-months-long mission to perfect the paint brush needed for this. If you use a normal one, the bristles are too long which leads to inaccurate movements of the bit of the brush that is touching the paper. Cutting the paintbrush short gives better results but sometimes things get a bit “scratchy” looking.
Here are a few I’ve cut short.
The wide yellow one with the one thin bristle - I thought having all those other bristles there might hold the individual one in place more, but it didn’t really, and also having just one bristle doesn’t lift enough paint.
I’m also trying to get a brush as thin as possible so I can do lots of detail and small handwriting. I’ve been trying to see what’s the smallest handwriting I can plot readably - but it’s fraught with issues.
So far the better results have come from much larger letters.
This piece also comes with a timelapse of the painting process, which you can watch on: Instagram | Tiktok | Twitter | Youtube
I also used the wet brush technique on this one, and so I’ll share a video of that soon! Here’s a little sneak preview in the meantime!
That’s all, thanks again for joining me!
I’ll leave you with this shot of a sweet gradient in the paint water, and I’ll see you here next week.
- Amy ⭐
