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'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!

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mattdesl 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

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!

	▲	NelsonMinar 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		JetPens has been an invaluable resource for learning about and buying pens. Their blog is great: https://www.jetpens.com/blog
	▲	sleepybrett 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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