“Ladder Man”
Petica Watson, of Studio Bricolaged, experiments with ‘the world’s first 3D printing pen’ : The 3Doodler
When I first read about the 3Doodler printing pen, initially funded through Kickstarter, I was very intrigued. I thought it sounded amazingly fun, but then deemed it unnecessary and forgot all about it. A year later, I won a Wacom Inkling for doing a 2 minute video for the The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design courses, but when the Inkling was discontinued, I quickly suggested they give me a 3Doodler pen instead — and to my joyful surprise they agreed! As a gadget lover I found myself keen to play with it.
It is fairly easy to use BUT takes practice to get the hang of it. The promo videos show deft hands creating a perfect Eiffel Tower, lampshades, toy cars, etc, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be as simple as that! The pen extrudes hot plastic which cools down instantly but it behaves in a way that is slightly hard to predict and leaves wisps and squiggles everywhere. I found that I had to “let go” and NOT have my final outcome too fixed in my head before beginning — as with many artistic endeavors! Having said that, I quickly realized that the quality of line is more controllable if you are pressing the nozzle against paper, rather than in the air. You have to plan in advance and think about how you are going to construct and connect all your elements, before beginning anything complex.
“Ladle”
It’s another way to explore drawing – line drawing in particular – but then having the third dimension gives a surface pattern designer a chance to explore 3D work and get away from their computer screen and their flat surfaces! Imagine a drawing of a figure that can come off the page and then standup by itself!
As soon as I did my first piece, just a flat figure, I wanted to explore its shadow using lighting and photography. So I played with the idea of pulling it up from the page using pins and hidden corkboard, and lighting.
One of the effects I seem to get are these wisps of plastic when I stop pressing the extrusion button — I can’t seem to avoid it, so I started cutting them off with scissors initially. Then I decided to see if I could get them to be part of the effect, as with “Eye.”
“Eye”
I’m also really interested in exploring how to add other materials such as scraps of Gelli printed paper and other found objects to create a collage. I’ve started looking at wire art to see what inspiration I can take from there.
“My Cup Runneth Over – Not”
Since I have a whole lot of deep Ikea frames to fill, I might next explore drawings which stick out from the canvas!
Text borrowed from the novel “Station Eleven,” by Emily St John Mandel
So far I’ve only used ABS (Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene), a low-cost plastic that is easy to work with, but I’d like to try PLA (Polyactic Acid) bioplastic, a biodegradable polyester made from renewable resources such as sugarcane, which sticks to paper and glass better, and has a translucent option. The 3Doodler comes with two packets of various colors of ABS filaments, which you feed in a bit like a glue gun. You get through them pretty quickly! It might be nice if the pen had different-sized nibs to allow for more variation in line-weight and strokes.
Since I haven’t explored much “proper” 3D stuff I would like to make a bespoke lampshade perhaps involving a geometrical design and tissue paper. Or why not a whole chandelier! I will need to plan it out in Adobe Illustrator, print to paper then use that as a template to draw over with the 3Doodler. Then I’ll do that with flowers, butterflies, birds and maybe make a hanging mobile! I can see it will be very good for making jewelry, kids’ fancy dress accessories, architectural models, or 3D text — and I’ve just realized I could make stamps for printing with it too!
—PW
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Petica Watson, of Studio Bricolaged, is a surface pattern designer based in the UK. She previously made television documentaries about art for 14 years, and has traveled or lived in 46 countries. All images above courtesy of Petica Watson. (Thank you so much to Petica for letting us publish her review.)
Here’s the promotional launch video from 3Doodler 2.0 that blew our minds:
You can order the 3Doodler pen here. And see more amazing creations on the 3Doodler blog. It’s officially on my wish list!
What would you create with it?