Monthly check-in: APRIL (day late edition)! This month was mainly focused on the 1986 BBC Micro game The Sentinel by Geoff Crammond...
1. First test pen plot of landscape 0001 - but a bug is causing the "sentinels" to be places on the wrong squares.
2. Plotting a 64 frame animation.
3. 48 frame 16:9 animation on a single sheet of gorgeous hot-pressed paper.
4. Of course I had to try Riso printing the landscape too!!
5. Finished 48 frame animation sheet.
6. 3D red/blue anaglyph view!
7. Get your 3d glasses on!
8. The plots & prints that got sent out to the Patreon members + glasses, 'cause who TF had 3d glasses lying around?
9. Riso printed some Deep Keep Ltd business cards - 'cause I'm doing awesome stuff with archives - get your Riso printing done over at @aaaaaahriso 🌈
10. My desk in the mornings in the greenhouse, smells wonderful in here (until it gets too hot)
Monthly check-in: MARCH! 3rd post of the year, so let's see what's been going on!
1. A little jump ahead to some brush stroke work with the ArtFrame drawing machine.
2. Still dark in the mornings, in the greenhouse, but only just. I love the lighter days and I already kinda miss the fairy-lights + flowers.
3. Okay, back to the brush, have been trying out "simple" plots, which are basically just lines, but throwing in a brush and some adjustable height and it becomes so much more.
4. This was me figuring out how many marks I can make before the ink in the pen runs out.
5. An abundance of plants.
6. Large imperial sized plot. Because the reservoir on the brush pen can only hold so much ink it has to be topped up every 40 brush strokes or so. So I figured out why not change the ink colour each time. It ended up making beautiful transitions from one to the next.
7. Close up of the various shimmer inks, I'm in love!
8. Part of my job is writing grant funding specs, yay, Kitty is asking me how it's going 😭 - if there’s anyone out there in a GLAM(P) org who’s interested in/doing archiving born-digital, ummmm, stuff collections, hmu - I have questions.
9. For one of the tutorial videos; showing how even very simple code can create something interesting; and code is only a part of it, the pen, paper and how you manipulate them counts for a lot too. Here I'm moving the plotter around the paper.
10. The new Lamy Safari Roll-Ink pen. Their fountain pen ink cartridges in a rollerball body. Of course I immediately washed out the cartridge and replaces the ink 😁
That's it for the month, catch you in 30 days time!
Monthly check-in: FEBRUARY! The month where I did some Riso experiments, and the bulbs flowered.
1. An old 80s Pop Riso print, the last one from an edition of 100
2. Postcard prints of the "80s Pop: Roxy 🍿" project, code generated art based on 80s retro Art Deco cinema design.
3. In the Riso studio, printing with pink & yellow.
4. Postcards, A5 and an A3 Riso prints. Some of these went off to the Patreon supporters, others to a few friends, a whole stack is still waiting to get posted, and the eight A3 prints will end up in the, when I pull my finger out and get that set up.
5. The final postcards, Yellow + Red, Yellow + Pink, Yellow + Green, printed over at @aaaaaahriso
6. My studio got super messy, so I was pleased when I cleared all the surfaces, so a rare tidy studio shot.
7. Finally got past the Drawing Machines 101: Pen & Paper video, running through the final edit.
8. My writing desk in the greenhouse.
9. Enjoying keeping my gardening journal up to date, while surrounded by flowers.
10. All the crocuses, which will go into the garden soon.
And that's it until next month, love you all ❤️
Monthly check-in: JANUARY?!? I logged on to do Feb update and noticed I missed January (clearly I'm doing this ignoring social media thing well). So here's a catch-up.
1. The rubber stamp of epic proportions, 13 adjustable alpha/numeric bands, perfect for excessive ridiculousness.
2. The greenhouse early in the morning in the snow.
3. Hello!!!
4. Sun rising over the Shire!
5. Wrote some code to make the drawing machine handle brushes, which has lots of potential!
6. INKS, SO MESSY, SO FUN!
7. Which allows me to use glittery shimmer & sheen inks in the brush pens.
8. Close up of the ink.
9. Asemic writing.
10. Blubs starting to come up!
Monthly check-in: DECEMBER! And Happy New Year everyone, love you all ❤️
1. I wrote some code to turn images into dithered hex-grid dots, and then made the @bantamtools ArtFrame draw literally hundreds of thousands of dots.
2. Close up view of a batch of postcards I plotted for the members of my Patreon.
3. The whole dots thing works by taking this group of 12 dots, turning various ones off to make that part of the design lighter or darker, then repeating the pattern. Basically ordered dithering (for those that know).
4. I printed some zines on the riso printer to explain the process (a bit).
5. And then sent the mini zine along with the postcards. 'cause if I want to make good zines, I need to make okay-ish zines first to get through the loads of mistakes 🤔
6. Speaking of riso, we sorted out the riso studio some more and put a bunch of shelves up (that you can't see here), to make the space easier to work in. Slowly building the website and IG account for it over here @aaaaaahriso 🌈 2026 should be a good year.
7. Made some festive code based riso cards to send out 🎄
8. And of course a whole bunch of snowflake stamped envelopes, lots of sticking & gluing!
9. One day these seedlings will become ink for the TWSBI Eco fountain pens and pen plotter! 🪻🌼🌸✒️
10. Sat at my writing desk, in the greenhouse at 6:20am (and -2℃) this morning, like most mornings, tending to the seedlings and writing in my journal and planning out the day.
There's been a lot of writing, a fair amount of letters, postcards, cards & zines sent this month. Also this is the eighth month of only posting to IG once a month, feeling good and ready to slide into a much more analogue 2026 💌
Monthly check-in: NOVEMBER!
Things have chilled out a lot this month, with deadlines done, so it's been a good opportunity to start new things. The Drawing Machine 101 videos are finally GO on YouTube, and I opened up the Patreon, which is settling in. So here's what happened in November in 10 photos.
1. Hello from the studio, the plotters are busy and the ArtFrame is making envelopes. Incredible "Sirens" print by @lanabagu if you like dangerous naked monster ladies.
2. Close up of the ArtFrame not only stamping snowflakes, but also adding scoring and cutting the envelope shape to make things SO MUCH EASIER.
3. Recording b-roll for the "What is a Drawing Machine" video, lines side-to-side, back-and-forth, around and both at the same time 😀
4. Gotta new greenhouse where I get to hang out each morning while developing a new morning writing ritual.
5. Sowed some Sweat Peas, because they are "hardy annual", well, we'll see about that! Will they survive the frost? 🤷♂️🌱
6. DOTS. Crossing the streams; POSCA pens need "pumping" to prime them and keep the paint flowing, meanwhile I've got the ArtFrame STAMPING rubber stamps, so why not replace the stamp with a POSCA pen and see what happens?
7. For Fibonacci day, so many DOTS on an A2 sheet. Check out newsletter #75 for a larger photo (newsletter.revdancatt.com) - I'll probably put this one up for sale when I finally sort my online shop shit out (sometime in mid '26 maybe).
8. More DOTS. As a halftone compromise, I CAN'T change the size of the dots as you'd normally do in halftone, but perhaps I can apply dithering to a hexagonal grid?
9. Failed plot, 'cause the green pen ran out of paint. Early experiment for Patreon postcards and prints in December. Going to put together some code and dive into this some more over the next couple of weeks.
10. FALLiNGWATER MiXTAPE. This project had a playlist, yay! That playlist was on Spotify, boo! Now it's on C90 tape, yay! 🏴☠️
There was SO MUCH MORE, but 10 per month is all we get - also my dopamine levels are AWESOME tyvm, catch you again next month 😀🎄
Monthly check-in: OCTOBER DONE! Hello 🎃
Still more crunchy deadlines, but October was the start of a couple of things...
1. Riso printed ghost postcards, happened later in the month, but using it as the "poster image" for this set of 10 👻
2. More envelope making and stamping. Worked out a way to chain together a cutter, and scorer, and a stamper to stamp, score and cut envelopes from a larger sheet.
3. Start of something new, planting some seeds in the greenhouse, a new favorite place of mine to hang out in the morning.
4. Pen plotting silver metallic "ghosts"
5. Drew a ghost design, and printed out the two colour layers to feed to the Riso printer.
6. Printed in three different colour ways, this is how you accidentally end up with 192 ghost postcards.
7. Asking Kitty (my AI PA) to write 50 short messages on the back of the silver "ghost" plots from photo number 4.
8. The seeds!!! They sprouted! But will they survive the winter?
9. Kitty is still writing my todo list, telling me to take it easy in the evening.
10. Just hanging out in the studio!
...and, catch you again in four weeks time, kinda getting into this new IG posting schedule.
Monthly check-in: SEPTEMBER DONE! Hello 👋
Last month continued to see me hurtling towards an important work deadline, so I spent the rest of the time carrying on with the whole envelope thing, here's more of that.
1. The 3d printed envelope stencil with a ludicrous, and yet very practical handle.
2. Cutting an envelope out of an old 70s Pop misprint.
3. Drawing Machine!!!! Give the code an envelope outline and let it fill it with circles.
4. Or, even more fun, CYM "halftone" dots to stamp.
5. Overview of the dotty envelope test.
6. When I figured out how to attach a blade to the drawing machine 🤖🔪
7. The blade and 3d printed holder in question.
8. The first two envelopes cut, folded and stuck, each envelope is different and unique each time.
9. Next working out how to attach a scoring tip to add creases/fold-lines.
10. Code can now spit out; where to stamp shapes (within the envelope shape, and avoiding the address areas), score the paper for easy folding, and then finally adding cuts.
It's been a bit of a faff, but I now have all the bits I need to do more complex drawing, stamping, scoring, perforating and cutting based on code generated csv files. And that was last month in a nutshell.
#penplotter #drawingmachine
Monthly check-in: AUGUST DONE! Hello 👋
Last month was full of a crunchy work deadline and being out of the studio a lot, and the time spent in the studio was mainly studio admin. Three things popped out when reviewing photos for last month.
1-5: Reworking FALLiNGWATER code to output greyscale files suitable to sending to the Riso printer. The first photo is a test print on the inkjet, 2-5 show the riso prints, where I messed up the border and then cut it down to cute playing card size.
6-8: The pocket notebook making continues. It doesn't take long to hand make a single notebook, or to make a bunch of them. But it does take a long time, when you don't have much time, to fit "quick" tasks in, so that project is still ongoing.
9-10: Hand making notebooks isn't enough so I've moved onto making envelopes as well, still early days but made my life easier by 3d printing an envelope outline stencil. Now I can turn rejected prints and pen plots into envelopes, and you know, intentional prints and plots.
I've realised I've spent the last few months making tools to do... stuff, and make... things, with one tool leading onto the next, and not having time to use those tools. With Autumn coming it feels like a good time to stop preparing, and more time enjoying doing, with all the things I've made for myself.
Monthly check-in: JULY! Lots of day-job work this month, but here's some things I got up to.
1. 3d printed a tool holder for hand sewing notebooks.
2. The first 16 out of 32 covers for FALLiNGWATER notebooks
3. Some notebooks made 😁
4. A new code-art project involving subdivisions, archive printed vs Riso printed.
5. Archival print version with lovely colours.
6. Riso version in four colours: pink, yellow, blue & green.
7. Getting the stompy-stamper back up and running, but this time being able to actually feed in some text and letting it get on with it.
8. Letter frequency and order, from 1-10 stamps of a letter I only have time to get the next one ready. For 15 to 30 stamp I have time to go pee before the next letter. At around 50+ stamps of a letter I have time to go off and do something else while it stamp. The numbers on the stamp holders are fractions of mms difference in size, so 10.4mm, 10.2mm and 10mm - 'cause the stamps are slightly different and change with temperature, not a drugs reference.
9. A2 rubber stamped passage of text.
10. Still need to work on baseline alignment, and apostrophes 😬 (may have to hand carve stamps for that last one, same for commas, hyphens, colons and semicolons).
And that's it for my once a month check-in with social media, back to touching grass.
Monthly check-in: JUNE! This month has been mainly about playing with the riso printer.
1. Tiger print (actually the last day of June, but I'm putting him here first for the grid). Turns out pink and green is my favorite riso colour combo so far. I'm still not very good at drawing tails, or paws, or flowers, or tigers, but I think he's cute for being drawn quickly in Procreate on the iPad.
2. Some generative code art tests, lots of squares and circles.
3. I also made a bunch of handmade notebooks from old failed prints, so now I have a use for them other than turning them into postcards.
4. More riso tests.
5. 3d printed a paper, card and envelope holder to make life easier and more organised.
6. Made a zine for the Flickr Foundation out of a blog post, to see if I could.
7. Layout of 25 of the zines.
8. I also made test prints of every riso colour I have (6) with every other riso colour, so I could see how the colours combine.
9. The colours I have, yellow, fluorescent pink, bright red, green, medium blue and not shown black.
10. Tiger print right at the end of the month, rawwwww!!
#riso
May 2025.
I've stopped posting to SM, but it's not totally obvious & I still see new followers, so I figured I could handle posting 12 times a year, with ten photos from the last month, which was mainly;
Keeping the studio tidy, designing some pen holders & tools to help me hand make notebooks, and getting access to a Riso printer (and making a pew pew pew raygun riso print).
