There is a lively community of plotter enthusiasts in the drawingbots discord channel. One of those is Sam Norton, who goes by hurtle there.

Sam has been using the AxiDraw to paint with acrylics using WaterColorBot software.

a useful, but fairly unsuccessful little sunday morning plot to see how much detail would come across on a small picture.

tried again but a bit bigger, and possibly chose a better range of paint colours.

The discord has channels for works in progress, process discussions, as well as a gallery. This encourages the community to share works at various stages as well as early drafts or versions. These two paintings of the same subject have different palettes and sizes and give insight into the process.

Sam’s website features many of his hand paintings, and it is fascinating to see that he has taken some of the same subject matter and revisited it with the AxiDraw.

He has taken the same set of glasses and experimented both with paints and dipped india ink.

It’s fun to see how the same subject looks, not just with hand painted vs. AxiDraw, but also with different media. The ink behaves differently and the dipping process is so much fun to watch.

This chair is another example. The scale of these is quite different as well. The original is about 70 x 80 cm and the AxiDraw version is 25 x 35 cm. I enjoy the contrast in texture, precision and technique.

I will look forward to seeing more of Sam’s work, as the textures are fascinating, and the process of converting photographs to vector art is complicated by the added dimension of the paint palette. I’ll leave you with this closeup of the piece from the top of this article, which was taken by our previously featured artist, Bleeptrack, who received the piece through the drawingbots plotswap.

Thank you to Sam for generously sharing your photos and video clips!