TSP & Stippling as alternatives to greyscale

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Here are two other techniques I look forward to trying with my GF: TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem (yes, really!)) and Stippling. Both techniques are useful for devices such as laser cutters, as they don’t depend on true greyscales.

In case you’re not familiar with these, here are a couple of examples:

First the Mona Lisa rendered as TSP:

And here’s a nice example of Stippling:

The good folks over at Evil Mad Scientists have put together some tools and a tutorial for these methods: http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/TSP_art & http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/StippleGen respectively.

NB: The techniques involved require at least a passing knowledge of image manipulation and depend on user-installed programs, so I’d say these might be intermediate-level projects if one has never worked with them. YMMV, of course!

Cheers!

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These are great!
I’ve done huge areas of the Stipple technique in just printed paper that I reassembled on the wall, and it looks great large too.

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I bet it would work with Pointillism. We could all become famous like Georges Seurat. If you were to use an inlay to create color. That would be cool.

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Great idea. I’m especially a fan of the stipple technique. I’ll have to do a few projects with it.

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I can totally see these techniques looking amazing with two-toned acrylic!!

https://www.inventables.com/categories/materials/acrylic?utf8=✓&selected_filters[Effect][]=2+color

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You can also engrave far enough into acrylic that it will hold paint. That means your designs can be as many colors as you like!
Engrave one layer, use a squeegee to fill the engraving with (laser safe) paint, then engrave the next.
I am hoping that I can engrave right through the paint.

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That’s a really clever idea!

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Yes!! One of my architecture studios made a whole tray of stackable maps that way! Each team focused on a unique aspect of our site, and we displayed them on separate sheets of clear acrylic- my team squeegeed black paint into engraved lines to make our base site map before applying other colors to new diagrammatic engravings on top. When all the sheets were stacked, you could look through and see each team’s site analysis!

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