Bugs! 2

Staedtler pigment liners and Derwent Line Makers on Fabriano Disegno 200 gsm paper. 21.0 x 29.7 cm, unframed. This is an original drawing made using an AxiDraw V3/A3 plotter, a drawing robot - mine’s called Fuzz-3PO (Human/Plotter relations).

A play on the idea of glitches or bugs for an Instagram event with other artists using pen plotters. Many pen plotters use code to create their visual outcomes and so bugs in the code can create unexpected results. My process is to draw in Adobe Illustrator before formatting the drawing for Fuzz-3PO to understand what’s going on, so there aren’t really any opportunities for glitches to occur. I decided to have a bit of fun with the wording and drew these beetles before slightly offsetting the images and overlaying them to create visual distortion.

Drawing using a plotter produces technically precise images which retain the analogue elements of drawing, the interaction between ink and surface, and combine them with the unique characteristics and quirks of the drawing machine. I enjoy the ordered process of drawing and planning a plot in combination with the small elements of chaos in its execution - some of my favourite areas of the drawings are often the areas of slight overlap or an unexpected combination of inks producing new colour. Plots of the same pattern will vary slightly as a result of the process.

Caring for your drawing:
Where possible I make use of lightfast and archival inks on acid free paper. Inks can still fade or change colour over time if they are exposed to strong UV light so I recommend hanging your drawing somewhere that is not in direct sunlight and when framing the drawing to use UV filtered glass.