Or are you referring to other printing methods, say for example silk screening? There, you would definitely select a specific ink to use. It just depends on what your goals are.
But if the paper can't be assumed to be white, CMY need to be opaque, otherwise yellow on black paper would just look black. Then you can no longer create red, green and blue. So you need additional red, green and blue pigment, likewise opaque. So "CMYRGBKW". Then the other colors can be mixed via dithering the eight base colors as usual.
Or maybe your printer still needs white paper, and the white pigment has some other use?
Looking at the artwork on my wall, there’s two big things that set prints apart from an original artwork. 1. Computer software doesn’t capture the imperfection of a physical medium. 2. Printers can’t reproduce the texture of layered colors.
Anyway, yes, professional printing can go beyond just CMYK in various ways.
This bit from the article made me laugh ruefully though: "it's as simple as buying some black paper and a white gel pen." You can get some beautiful effects with white ink on black paper but it is notoriously difficult to get looking good. White ink is tricky stuff. But that's part of the fun!
Does anyone know of an inexpensive plotter you can buy or build?
ETA: I guess a true maths geek nerd artist would probably want something more modular and larger anyway, but the Silhouette machines are varied, interesting, support a pretty well documented protocol (GPGL, a variant of/alternative to HPGL I think) and are supported in Inkscape and Python.
The first thing I programmed was having it draw a hilbert curve and it worked great!
Having an existing 3d printer is a bit “draw the rest of the owl” for this, but being able to extend and modify a device like a pen plotter is pretty nice.
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://note.com/penplotter/n/n4fdf6959738a
The page is in Japanese, but you can get a feel of things through the embedded videos. One of them links to this instructables page in English:
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 and stable.
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?
I’ll probably have to make the holder myself but good to know others have had the same problem!
This is kinda no longer true. Computer tools such as “krita” (open source) do an exceptional job emulating paints and brushes. A lot of professional illustrations now days are done digitally and printed. “Art” less so but the tablets keep getting better.
As someone who was kinda adept at making black and white prints from negatives, I kind of miss some of the old tech (making prints was a little magical). But digital / ink jet can get you 90% of the darkroom much easier and has some serious advantages.
I do applaud the effort and the fun factor here is real. Those pen plotters are neat and enough different to make this an interesting niche.
It’s very accessible these days to have a finished piece of art that’s all yours - even with little artistic ability.
Great portfolio of art btw, thanks for sharing!
I remember using flatbed plotters with a "static-cling" button. (maybe HP?)
you clicked the button out, put paper on the flatbed, then clicked the button in and a static charge sucked the paper down and held it in place.
You would generate your plots using a language that could select various color pens, move to x1,y1, pen down, move to x2,y2, pen up, etc...
I think better printers and then inkjets are what finally killed them off.
I feel like I get asked a lot the same questions and I think this article describes it best. Like yes I could have just upgraded to a nicer printer, but there is something fun about the process of getting an artwork plotted that makes it fun for me.
I need to upload some of my plots to share.
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On a similar note for others who want to get into this, there was a thread awhile back on "What is the 90% activity in your favorite hobby", for example sanding taking 90% of the time for woodworking. For pen plotting the 90-95% is the art side. Taking images, converting them into g-code either via SVG or other processes, or writing code to make generative art, that is the 90%.
At the end of the day the pen plotting itself at the surface level is a projection of the effort taken to generate the art. Where it gets really exciting is the capabilities and unique aspect of the medium (like touching on white ink or watercolor) that create truly unique ways of presenting the art.
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Some related subreddits:
donatj•6h ago