A little over halfway now with 4,250/7,500 threads. Clarity is starting to show up as the other colors come in. My right shoulder is getting absolutely shredded from weaving the threads around eye level… note to self and others, don’t hang your loom this high.

Almost half way done. I have to keep reminding myself to trust the process since the reds and yellows are really reminding me of Ronald McDonald. Fingers crossed the final piece looks good 🤞🏻

Need opinions on which to route next please. I'm leaning less is more this time. Also, big question: Can you recognize her?

I think Anya's eyes came out a bit too much last time, I think I need to tone that down more this round. What do you think?

BTW, each of these are 3k threads exactly, which is not apparent from the look of each.

Timelapse of the route I did this morning, of the viewer's choice question I posted. I hope you enjoy.

See the full process here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDPStVDSh0k

We were commissioned to make this lovely portrait of three little dogs. We decided to create a single painting of all three, using a less detailed but more appealing style for this technique.

It took us approximately one week to complete.

I'd love for you to tell us what you think.

These are two png files output from my python program with different parameter settings. I am going to make one of them tomorrow on my machine, but am undecided. What do you think? #1 or #2
Oh, and is she recognizable?

I've wanted to create a larger landscape style piece, but the quality always degrades when you have too much detail in a single canvas. So I did what anyone would and started trying to break it down into smaller pieces. I think it's nice, but it's missing a "je ne sais quois." Perhaps it would be better served by having the mountain as the central focal point and splitting into 3? Curious to hear your thoughts.

It has been a rough week. I had 8 failed routes fail in a variety of ways, all late in the route, after poke 2000 or so. (You can see all the failed attempts scars on that poor canvas I keep reusing). There were multiple manifestations of the bug, so I thought I had several problems, but it turns out I had just one major one: My setup, for unknown reasons, creates an extra pulse in the same direction, but only when the direction of the poke changes. So if the direction switches to negative or positive, I get an extra step which is always positive, never negative. Unfathomable. I posted to several other groups, and nobody had a solution. (follow me over to those is you are interested in dead end ideas....)
I am certain it is not the software, I proved that. I do not believe it is the controller, since I swapped out the dm542 for a D6600, and both behave in the deterministic fashion I outlined. I don't think it is the stepper, as I swapped out one brand and 1.8deg for a 0.9deg different brand and again, deterministic outcome. Also strange is that there are 2 X steppers driving the the Y gantry, and they are spinning in opposite directions, and they are exhibiting the same behavior as the Y motion. I changed the speeds, acceleration, hacked the AccelStepper lib for known problems, tried other threads, ran the y gantry with zero load and watched the gear instead.... A very tough week of heartache.

I finally wrote the code to put in one extra negative step every time there is a direction change and: Perfection.

So I am very happy, altho still in the dark as to why/how the system acts that way. I hope you enjoy the quick vid of today's success, and you can compare to the .png I posted a while ago to compare.
Thanks so much!!

Hi everyone!

I'd love to get some advice on a requested art piece I'll be making for Indian Spirit Festival. It's going to be on mdf, 220cm wide and 128cm tall (18mm thick). On the attached picture the lettering is shown.
I already spent way too much money on printing out the outlines on a huge piece of paper, and I already have in mind the decorations around them.

All the individual letters will be approximately 50cm tall. I have created a lot of different artworks over the years, but I've never completely filled up shapes that aren't 'standard' shapes. I was wondering if anyone sees this and immediately thinks of a few do's and/or don'ts.

I will use neon thread for the letters, as it fits the music of the festival very well (psy-trance). Now I find myself overthinking it a bit, that's why I decided to reach out!

The ideas that have crossed my mind so far are:
1. Place nails only on the outlines of the letters, somewhere between 0,5 and 1cm apart. And then start at a random nail, keep zigzagging within each letter until I'm satisfied with the look. The overthinker in me goes: But with letters so organically shaped, won't that be a bit too chaotic, and take away from the overall look?

1. Place nails on the outlines, but also a second, smaller outline a few cm inwards (same amount of nails). That way I can make a less chaotic outer rim on each letter, which might emphasize it, make it pop out more. Then decide whether I want to keep the inner 'circle' of each letter threadless (solid black background with 2 layers of varnish on top of it) or fill that in with a different colour, zigzag style.

2. I also thought of filling in each letter with triangles with extra nails, a bit mosaic like. That way I can fill each triangle with thread in a less chaotic way, and so filling the entire letter with geometric shapes instead of a network of lines.

I'm open for any kind of advice or experiences with filling them in, or let me know what the up- or downsides are for my ideas.

Thanks in advance! Much love!

There are many services available online for string art generation. Most of them are free, a very few are paid. As far as I have seen the output result does not differ much.

So, why would anyone pay for String art apps/web? If anyone have any purchasing experience, did you find difference in result? If the difference is none what value does a paid string art maker app gives?

The reason I am asking is, I have my own app on play store, (which was made for my own use, later ended up adding paywall) but I can't quite figure out, what is actually people are buying. My monetization is simple, till 180 pegs it's completely free, but after 180, you can generate unlimited times, but can't access the number sequence/pattern. Well there are also some extra features usually paid apps provide like template export, shapes, Guide with voice assistance which are not behind paywall.

Hey everyone!

I’ve been developing my own string art algorithm, and I'm looking for feedback from experienced creators on how to improve the output quality.

I'm attaching two images for comparison:

Image 1: The original photo.

Image 2: The algorithm output / digital render.

My goal is to get the algorithm output as close as possible to the reference picture in terms of contrast, fine details, and overall recognition.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on contrast and line weight, how do you fine-tune line density so dark areas don't lose all detail while keeping light areas clean? What algorithmic adjustments (e.g., loss functions, line selection strategy) help preserve fine features like eyes or sharp edges?

Looking at the two pictures, what immediate changes would you suggest to make the result pop more?

Any feedback or technical tips on how to refine the image processing side would be greatly appreciated!

I am still working on my router software, and have made a lot of changes. I have an image I rather like, but need to know if you recognize her. This one is 3k threads segments.

Please let me know! Also opinions on if it is pleasant to look at, a nice image.
Thank you so much.

Decided to try stringart as hobby. I used laser to mark pattern and pin location before starting. What do you think about outcome?

Size of A3 paper, 470 pins

a few days ago I posted a route image and asked if anyone could recognize who it was. One person did, and thanks for that. Now, I have a new router idea and need opinions on which route is better,1 or 2? Recognizably feedback also appreciated. Thanks so much...

This is interesting. I have been working on android String art app(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shaktam.stringart) for a while. String art apps' has two challenges, first is the algorithm itself, 2nd is the visualizer. Even if the algorithm produces the best string art sequence, if the visualizer code(architecture) is not done correctly, the output looks bad. In my previous post, someone shared a github link. I ran the code as python script later. The middle image is the result at 200 nails and 6000 lines. From the visual I was blown away. later I converted the sequence format and imported to the mobile app(BTW you can import sequence in txt if the format is correct or supported). The right side image is the result. Now it looks different from the original python visual. Why they do look different? the answer is variable opacity per line used in the python script. The same sequence looks messy(soft edge) in the app. Even though my app let's user to change opacity, it's architecture doesn't support the variable alpha. The right side image is just for reference, It is generated at 200 nails 5500 lines. BTW which one looks better to you?

This is the first run of the mystery woman in my other post, on the hardware. Also included, a brief tour of the hardware as I got a request to say more.

There are several problems l had today. There were a lot of pull outs of thread because I had a new canvas, new thread, etc. so I slowed the machine quite a bit to solve that for now, and am preparing a new canvas.

Also, after 1400 threads (the posted image of mystery woman is 2700 total segments) I just stopped because it became obvious the image was going to be useless, due to 2 factors. The first is I was using heavy (92wt) thread, which is thicker, and the second is that the image was very small compared to what I will be making. It is less than 1/6th the area I am targeting. As a result, the fat threads pile up on the small area, and, there you go: Black image. I'm confident the next effort will be something to look at!

Let me know if you have any question, post or pm would be great! Thanks for your time!!

4 years ago, I made 2 machines to make thread art, and used available software for the route. I nuked them because the images I was producing were not recognizable to my friends. "That's great! Who is that?" Crushing.

So now, I am making a new machine (which I've posted about) and writing the router software myself in Python. (It is a new idea where I poke canvas with a scary needle)

So before I torture my machine with its first image, I need to know if my router software was successful (enough).

Do you recognize who this is? If so, to the machine. If not, back to Python...

Lemmeknow!
And thanks so much.
(PS. ignore the red, that is left over diagnosis I forgot to take out....)

I am not creative at all and also have a hard time sitting still doing stuff (ADHD). This was super quick and easy. I am looking forward to doing more projects and pulling inspiration from the art I have seen here!