Bay Area Maker Faire 2013 Drawings

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I’ve been meaning to share these drawings from Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 for more than a year now.  As I was reinstalling my PlotterBot to its original home on our living room wall I figured this was a good time to take pictures of these drawings to share.  I’ve also added a quick blog post to go with each of these drawings, to add a bit more background.  Here are the links to the Doctor Who dalek poster, Game of Thrones House Stark dire wolf poster, and Breaking Bad’s Walter White poster.

At last year’s Maker Faire my PlotterBot did not have a functional pen lift mechanism.  I had designed a pen holder with this ability in mind, but I still hadn’t actually tried it out.  In fact, it wasn’t until about two weeks after Maker Faire that I actually got a reliable pen lift working.  One of the great things about these “single line super pixelated drawings” is that they’re big and bold.  I also really like the abstract nature of this drawing style and how it promotes appreciating the works from a distance.  The downside to them is that they take a really long time and basically use up an entire pen with each drawing.

I had several other drawings on display back in 2013 – including a traveling salesman problem style Death Star, Yoda, and Nikola Tesla portrait.  This last one I gave to Joey Hurdy when he stopped by the booth just after Maker Faire ended on Sunday.

Breaking Bad’s Walter White

Breaking Bad's Walter White, blue Sharpie on banner paper, 14" tall x 29" wide

Breaking Bad’s Walter White, blue Sharpie on banner paper, 14″ tall x 29″ wide

This is one of my drawings from exhibiting at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013.  It features Breaking Bad’s Walter White sitting in a warehouse surrounded by bricks of cash.  The drawing is blue Sharpie on banner paper, 14″ tall x 29″ wide.  The drawing took about five hours to complete, because of all of the dark areas.

I chose the blue Sharpie for this drawing to echo the series’ famous “blue meth.”  I think it would have looked equally good in green1 or yellow.2  This one of my wider drawings – very nearly to the edge of each side of the sheet of paper, which is fairly difficult to do.  Since this drawing was started at the top left corner3 I couldn’t have been positive it would have finished within the left edge of the paper.  You can also see a dark spot at the bottom left where the pen soaked into the drawing for a bit before I picked up the pen.  Depending upon the drawing, I actually like this effect.

Since this drawing was posted on the fence at Maker Faire 2013, rolled up, archived, unrolled, transported to Maker Faire 2014 where it was displayed again, you can see a little wrinkling of the paper at the edges.

  1. Greed, envy, cash []
  2. To call out the yellow hazard suit []
  3. You can see how the drawing is darker at the top right, lighter at the bottom left []