2,700 is how many small “tally” marks I could draw on an A3 sheet without the ink running out.
But around 50 is the limit if they are big chunky brush stroke.
Or rather, when I say “limit” I mean the point at which I’d like to stop the drawing machine and top up the ink in the brush pen. One trick I was using was to randomise the drawing order of the lines, so the change between freshly topped up ink strokes, and drying out brush strokes wasn’t so obvious - or at least looked more intentional.
Which I guess they were.
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Oh look, you can now centre text on Substack, finally!
The above images are fine, but what I really just wanted to do, was lots of repeating brush strokes on a large sheet of paper. No stupid in a circle stuff, no groups of five “tally” marks. Just one brush stroke after the another until a whole page was full.
Stopping every 50 marks or so to top-up the ink, but hey, why not keep changing the ink colour each time you top it up, so the colours gradually change from one to the next?
Until the whole sheet is filled.
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# PATREON
This is all part of the “oh shit, there’s a send out postcards Patreon level, and I’m still not at the creating pen plots as part of the Drawing Machines 101 tutorial videos, so I have to do something else until we get there” stage.
Don’t get me wrong, I love making the postcards (and larger) pen plots to send out, but as previously mentioned the idea is the video and postcard making are supposed to be the same thing in a super time efficient feedback loop 😁
Meanwhile, each time I make these extra specifically for Patreon plots I want to make a video explaining the process - instead I’m just adding it to the list of fun videos I’ll go back and make once everything is all over.
Needless to say there’s a nice backlog of potential videos building up.
Anyway, the short version is, I loved the whole-page-being-filled version so much that another tweak of the code later and I had it calculating the gaps to leave to I could cut the page up into postcards, and even the trim marks to make the whole thing easier.
My favorite part is these are basically just simple lines, the maths is easy, draw a single line from point A to point B, do it again and again and again and again and again and AGAIN.
The brush and the ink is doing all the work here.
Oh, and these all got posted out yesterday, making this the worst Patreon self-promotion ever, but I guess there’s always next month.
# DRAWING MACHINES 101
Two new videos since last time;
Which wraps up the introduction and moves us onto Module Two, where we’ll start writing code, most likely before next newsletter. Exciting!
The feedback so far has been good and I’m very much looking forwards to getting them all finished 😁
# THE END
Oh what, links!
Agnes Martin: https://www.moma.org/artists/3787-agnes-martin#works
How to tell if an abstract photo is vertical or horizontal | YouTube link.
The answer to that last one is apparently “have a book that shows you the original orientation” - which is less exciting than I thought it was going to be, but still nice to know even the experts have trouble.
Anyway, this was a picture heavy newsletter, it happens sometimes. Next newsletter is most likely going to be talking about DFOS, and that’ll be with you on Thursday the 2nd of April.
Love you all,
Dan
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Curious to read/hear your take on DFOS and your possible uses. Now that they have opened up space creation I’m wondering what sorts of artist spaces will pop up.