Plotter art generator: 21 drawing styles for photos and places

Each style turns a photo or a place into lines a pen plotter can draw, saved as pen paths in an SVG, or into a 1-bit PNG for a laser. Choose one below to see what it does and when it suits, or try them on a photo of your own.

Try them on your photo

The pictures are test renders, each on an A5 page with a 0.3 mm pen and settings tuned for the photo. Most are drawn from the lion photo; Words uses the mountain peak photo; Edges uses the tabby cat photo; Fingerprint and Draw use the matryoshka dolls photo; Trace colour uses the spiral staircase photo. New to plotting? Start with what a pen plotter is.

Lines

Sketch

Loose ink-sketch outlines, with shading only in the dark areas. Suits portraits, objects and anything with clear edges. Built on flow-based difference of Gaussians.

A5 test: 1,627 paths · about 21 min

Lines

Flow

Evenly spaced lines that follow the shapes in the picture and pack tighter where it is dark. Suits portraits and landscapes: the classic plotter look, with long strokes and few pen lifts. Built on evenly spaced streamlines.

A5 test: 1,321 paths · about 18 min

Lines

Scribble

A ballpoint doodle: one looping line circles its way across the picture, its loops crowding together and piling up where it is dark, spreading out in the mid-tones and leaving the lights blank. Suits expressive portraits, drawn as a few long continuous scribbles.

A5 test: 39 paths · about 18 min

Lines

Words

The picture written in your own words, in straight rows of single-stroke letters: close rows in the shadows, fewer and looser rows in the lights, and blank paper in the highlights. Suits bold shapes against a plain ground, written in a letter, a poem, song lyrics or a whole chapter, repeated to fill the picture or written once, in order.

A5 test: 4,485 paths · about 42 min · from the Mountain peak photo

Dots

Dither

A grid of dots, ticks, squares or dashes whose density follows tone, like an old newspaper photo. Suits laser engraving and retro prints; the same pattern exports as a 1-bit PNG at up to 1,200 DPI. Uses classic 1-bit dithering such as Floyd–Steinberg and Bayer.

A5 test: 16,481 paths · about 114 min

Dots

Stipple

Dots scattered by tone, drawn as separate dots or joined into one wandering line. Suits pointillist portraits. Dots are placed with LBG stippling or error diffusion.

A5 test: 7,826 paths · about 83 min

Lines

Hatch

Straight parallel lines that thicken into crosshatching as the picture darkens: lines join in one by one through the mid-tones, extra passes at new angles cross them in the shadows, and the highlights stay paper. Suits bold graphic prints.

A5 test: 3,132 paths · about 38 min

Lines

Squiggle

Rows of waves that grow taller, then tighter, where the picture is dark, one continuous line per row. Suits single-line wave portraits.

A5 test: 72 paths · about 17 min

Lines

Spiral

One long spiral that wobbles taller, then tighter, where the picture is dark, broken only where it crosses the edge. Suits record-sleeve looks with very few pen lifts.

A5 test: 55 paths · about 18 min

Lines

Rings

Calm rings that spread out from a centre and crowd together where the picture is dark, like ripples slowed by the shadows, breaking where the picture is light. Suits quiet, graphic portraits.

A5 test: 438 paths · about 14 min

Lines

Edges

Clean single-stroke outlines of the main shapes, with no doubled lines and no shading. Suits minimal line drawings. Uses extended difference of Gaussians, thinned to one-pixel lines.

A5 test: 104 paths · about 2 min · from the Tabby cat photo

Lines

Engrave

Copperplate engraving: lines follow the form at a steady pitch, swell in the shadows and end in sharp points, break into dashes toward the lights, and cross into lozenges in the darkest areas. Suits banknote-style portraits, busts and pets, with real variable line width from a single pen.

A5 test: 2,189 paths · about 34 min

Lines

Fur

Thousands of short strands that follow the shapes and gather where the picture is dark. Suits painterly texture: pencil fur, brushed metal or wind in grass, depending on the settings.

A5 test: 4,561 paths · about 42 min

Lines

Chiaroscuro

A drawing on toned paper, like an old master study in chalk: your pen draws the tones darker than the paper, a white gel pen the tones lighter than it, and the paper itself is every tone in between. Lines follow the form, and plain skies and backdrops get only calm, widely spaced lines. Suits portraits, busts and pets; dark photos go on black paper with white only. Built on evenly spaced streamlines.

A5 test: 1,907 paths · about 24 min

Lines

Facets

The picture is cut into angular facets, each hatched at its own angle and spacing: a woodcut with a cubist streak. Suits bold, graphic portraits. Uses superpixels and the local structure of the picture.

A5 test: 4,724 paths · about 39 min

Lines

Fingerprint

Ridges like a fingerprint: lines follow fur and form, pack tighter in the shadows, and add or drop a line by forking or turning back. Every line is closed or runs to the edge, and no two lines cross. Suits pets, feathers and dark, textured subjects. Grown by repeated oriented Gabor filtering.

A5 test: 197 paths · about 7 min · from the Matryoshka dolls photo

Lines

Draw

Hand-drawn ink lines, placed where an illustrator would put them, then traced for the pen. Suits portraits and objects. A neural drawing model runs in your browser; the first use downloads it.

A5 test: 126 paths · about 3 min · from the Matryoshka dolls photo

Extract

Contours

Contour lines like a topographic map, treating the picture as a landscape. Suits topographic portraits and heightmaps; works on photos, grayscale heightmaps and Terrarium elevation tiles.

A5 test: 592 paths · about 19 min

Extract

Trace colour

Every line of one colour, traced as single strokes. Suits roads from a map screenshot, contour lines from a scanned topo map or ink from a drawing. Pick the colour from the picture.

A5 test: 132 paths · about 3 min · from the Spiral staircase photo