No brush, no wheel
A pen plotter is a machine that only knows how to move a pen in straight lines. Everything expressive about it comes from what a nervous hand and a cheap motor can do with those constraints.
A pen plotter is a machine that only knows how to move a pen in straight lines. Everything expressive about it comes from what a nervous hand and a cheap motor can do with those constraints.
Ballpoint pens on coated paper leave a faint skip at every direction change. Most of the beauty of a plotted drawing is in the places where the machine was asked to do something it does not like.
Because there is only one pen, the only way to get tone is density. Cross-hatching, stippling and contour stacking are all the same trick: put more lines closer together.