Plotted Postcards

Insects are cool. Steampunk is cool. Together they are cute and fun.

Songbird is a lovely restaurant in St. Louis that I enjoy very much. They are moving to a new location, so I made this in honor of the location where I met them. I wish them the best and I look forward to seeing the new spot.

This was fun to try to get to be clean. I think the crossing line was an artifact of the pen height, so I’ll try again to see if it reproduces.

A collaboration with my daughter

It was interesting to work together to see how we describe things differently and the challenges that exist when someone tries to describe what is in their minds eye.

The other day I was dreaming about tattoo’s and in particular traditional flash art. This is a rich area for interpretation and inspiration. An image of a swallow caught my attention and is a classic, simple, and memorable design.

There is a lot of opportunity in a plot like this to really experiment with different settings in Drawbotv3. It can really be a time sink to be adjusting this setting and that to get what you want. the program does a good job with WYSIWYG. I do think that when the plot is down on the postcard it has some different feel. This is one where I was satisfied with the version on the screen. Now that I can look at the plot, I think there are some ways to give this a more rich feel.

I was watching motorcycle videos and dreaming about classic motorcycles and was inspired to create this.

I like the depth and movement that is captured here.

This is a study in patterns that I thought came out nicely. This was a test plot. If you look closely at the right side of the plot, you can see the overplot.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina, or OBX, is where my family went for summer vacation for nearly all the years that I can remember. We often camped and as the family got bigger, we switched to renting houses. In almost all years we stayed in Rodanthe. Sometimes other family members stayed with us or nearby, sometimes they stayed in Kitty Hawk, Avon, and other locations. I don’t recall ever renting a house on Ocracoke, but I’ve camped there while road-tripping.

Over the recent holiday, I spoke with some family members who I don’t talk to regularly. So, after doing so, I was thinking more about them and remembering adventures together.

I found the following website that had some good pictures of the piers in the area. Pier’s were a part of the adventures as they were near-by and provided a place to buy snacks and soft drinks. We also spent many hours on the pier fishing and under the pier getting a break from the hot summer sun.

There are so many great pictures and scenic spots on OBX. Maybe this will be a whole series.

Unbeatable Places to go Fishing in Outer Banks

I’ve made and mailed a few of these. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but for some reason this one really speaks to me.

The tear in the corner is from removing the tape that I use to hold the postcard down on the platform. I mostly use blue painters tape which is easier to remove than regular masking tape, but even then sometimes I’m probably too fast or rough with removing them and I end up with some damage. Oh well.

This was made with a different pen. A Uniball Onyx. This pen uses a liquid ink so the lines are quite different. The pen is also more fine than the bic cristal. I think I may have started and restarted this plot more than once to get the z-axis correct. I think this retracing is what caused the dark spot towards the upper right.