Plotter Drawings

George W. Hart

This page shows some early work of mine---drawings executed on a plotter in the years 1981-1982.  Above is "People" which shows a pile of people acrobatically arranged.  Click on the thumbnails below for recent scans of a few other plotter drawings that have survived from this period.
 
 
Donut

Can you draw a donut without lifting your pen from the paper?  Here is one way!  Someday I'll build one of these as a sculpture...

Egg

This form fits right in with my recent spherical sculpture, but is generated as a fish-eye transformation of a tessellated plane.

A Boy and His Dog

After reading Mandelbrot on fractals, I started generated many on the screen.  This one struck me in a Rorschach way, so I plotted it.

Snowflakes

This is my favorite from that period.  Each flake is unique, psuedo-randomly generated, but modelled  on the photographs in Bentley's book.

People 2

More people, geometrically arranged.  Each (except on the edges) touches neighbors at five points: head, hands, and feet.  The exact position of the joints is pseudorandomly chosen.

For those unfamiliar with it, the plotter is a computer-controlled pen. It is actually a wonderful artistic medium, because it can be very precisely controlled and can use archival materials (permanent inks and acid-free paper).  Behind each of these drawings lies a small computer program which controls the movement of the pen.  Shortly after this period, I moved on to other activities and have not returned to this medium.



Copyright 1999, George W. Hart