Conclusion: Spirograph is fun, but it’s a toy. Wild Gears is more expensive, and somewhat more difficult to use, but it’s a more serious drawing tool.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Spirograph vs Wild Gears Comparison appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I was thinking some more about storage for the larger gears and rings and had a brainstorm. Here is the result.

I considered making something similar but this was less than $8 on Amazon and I figured even my time in retirement is worth more than that, so I bought it almost fully assembled. There are two minor issues. The large rings don’t stand properly in the back. The posts come up inside the ring. I had to put my largest gear as the rearmost item to give them something to lean against. Putting a heavy duty paper plate or maybe a light plastic one in the back would accomplish the same thing and is probably a better solution since it can be left there permanently.

The other issue is the smallest gear that fits properly is about 100 teeth. Anything smaller than that doesn’t rest on the side rails, and anything much smaller will fall right through. The rack ships as four pieces, with the cross dowels that hold it together needing to be fitted. As such, they could be shortened, pulling the side rails closer together and allowing smaller gears to be stored. I may cut an inch or so off of them and see how many more gears it will hold then.

I just now got this rack and haven’t used it while drawing yet, so I can’t say how well it will work in practice. I do know you don’t want to just cram in as many gears as will fit between the posts. There needs to be room to separate them so you can flip to the one you want. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be terrible to just lift out the whole group, find the one you want, and put the rest back. That would still be a lot faster than flipping through the CD case or digging through a box. Ten gears will fit between each set of posts.

Here is the bamboo dish rack on Amazon (affiliate link). They are inexpensive.

Anyone else try something like this? Let us know in the comments.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Storing Wild Gears 2: by Jay Heyl appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

More from Jay Heyl, who has provided some great ideas for Wild Gears storage. Jay has noticed that the laser cutting of the gears leaves an edge that is not perfectly smooth; it’s very slightly jagged, like steps on the X and Y axes, or like a pixelated edge if you blow up a digital image. I took out my jeweller’s loupe to look at some gears and I can see these lines, and I can feel their texture with a fine tool. You can kind of see it inside the holes and on the sides of the teeth in this photo:

Not satisfied with this edge, Jay writes:

I have one other rather geeky “modification” I’ve done to many of my Wild Gears…. smoothing out the stair step edges left by the laser when the gears are cut. These can cause an irregular movement as the pen slides around the hole and result in the lines having jagged sections. The stair step on the gear teeth can make the gears not slide against each other as they should. This can make the larger gears stick when using the outer holes and can make the smaller gears jump around. The stair steps eventually wear down from use but it can take a very long time for them to become anywhere near smooth.

Enter the diamond coated burr bit set. This set was less than $10 from Amazon.

This sloped conical burr (right) is a perfect fit for the small pen holes. You can do it totally by hand, simply rolling the bit between your fingers while sticking it in the pen hole, but that will likely wear your hands out pretty fast. I put the bit in a cordless drill and set it to screwdriver mode to slow the bit speed. Run the bit into the hole all the way to the end of the diamond section. Just a quick in and out is sufficient. I do all the holes from one side of the gear and then turn it over and re-do them from the other side.

You do need to watch what you’re doing when using the drill. These bits are covered in diamonds, the hardest natural substance known to man, and acrylic is not remotely close to the hardest substance known to man. With a short span of inattention you can turn a nice round pen hole into something more like a pen slot. This bit isn’t bad because the conical shape helps it center itself in the hole and it’s almost the perfect diameter. Quick in, quick out, you’re good to go.

None of the bits in this set is a perfect fit for the larger pen holes. I use one of the barrel bits and slide the gear around the bit when it’s inserted in the pen hole. I try to keep the gear moving so I don’t get the hole out of round. A couple moderately slow passes around the hole will knock the high points off the stair step and make the pen feel much smoother. You don’t need to get it perfectly smooth. Just knock down the edges and the pen won’t jump as it moves around the hole. You do need to be careful about keeping the gear perpendicular to the bit or you can take material off the rim of the hole and leave the ridges in the middle.

Smoothing the gear teeth takes two passes, the first with one of the medium barrel bits to deal with the outer portion of the teeth and then another with one of the smaller barrel bits that can fit down further between the teeth. The thing here is to watch that the gear is perpendicular to the bit so it takes a bit of material from the entire width of the teeth.

You don’t have to smooth both the gears and the rings. As long as the stair steps have been removed from one, the teeth will slide together smoothly. Imagine you had two staircases, one turned upside down on top of the other. They obviously won’t slide against each other very well. Replace one staircase with a sheet of plywood and the plywood will slide along the edges of the stairs. Same thing with the gears and rings. Doing both should make it a bit smoother but I haven’t found it necessary.

With all of these it’s probably a good idea to start doing it totally by hand until you have a feel for it and some confidence that you aren’t going to mess things up. Do a few holes and then try them with a pen. I think you’ll notice the difference, particularly if your gears are brand new. Ironically, the burr bits will probably leave a slight burr around the edges of the holes and gear teeth. Put the gear flat on a piece of paper and slide it around for ten or fifteen seconds. That will remove the burrs and make the gear feel smooth when drawing. ​

So if you’re seeking perfection, you might want to try what Jay’s been doing. The diamond burr sets even come in different grits, so a person could totally geek out getting the edges smoother and smoother. Or find out for yourself where the Law of Diminishing Returns applies. Feel free to share in the comments if you try this.

More from Jay Heyl coming soon.

The post For Wild Gears Super Geeks: Modifications appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Watercolour paper stretches when wet, so needs to be taped down on a flat surface like a board. A better tape than what I’m using (beige masking tape or green painter’s tape) is gummed paper tape. You can buy artist’s tape or, apparently, the tape used by butchers. I need to get some, and perfect my stretching skills.

There are many other watercolour techniques to explore for creating beautiful backgrounds. Just do a search on YouTube.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

Meanwhile, here are some videos of pieces that I’ve done:

The post WildGears Multimedia with Watercolours appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Unlike Spirograph pieces, which have a rim supporting the toothed edges, Wild Gears are laser-cut from a flat sheet of acrylic, so using putty (as you can see in my videos) actually raises the gear a bit off the surface of the paper. Holding the gear down with very strong rare earth magnets instead would keep them in closer contact with the paper.

These rare earth magnets have screw-in hooks in the top. That’s handy, as you need something to grasp in order to move/remove them – they’re so strong.

Suze writes, “I leave the screw part of them off where it would interfere with my arm movement. The acrylic does interfere with the magnetic force so sometimes I put the magnets on an angle half on and half off the acrylic. I try to be gentle with these in case I damage the teeth of the ring.”

She notes that the white/magnetic boards that are sold in the budget shops are not strong enough, so she went for a commercial grade board.

The working surface of her board is 50 x 50 cm (almost 20 x 20 inches), so it accommodates the large Wild Gears frames, which are 15 x 15 inches (40 x 40 cm).

She can even use the whiteboard (with, I assume, a dry erase marker) to make larger drawings. If she tries to use it vertically, the moving gears fall out, but it works on an angle.

This would be a good setup if one were demonstrating to a group.

She find that she saves time setting up and putting away the Wild Gears, as she doesn’t have to mess with putty.

With enough magnets, the gears and the paper do not shift. She bought 14 magnets altogether. I looked on Amazon and these are the closest I found to the ones in her photo. They’re 16 mm (about 5/8″) in diameter. There are others that are larger.

She got her commercial quality magnetic board made by ABP Group (http://www.abpgroup.net.au/) in Brisbane. They’re made for schools and work environments. It might be something one would have to source locally. If you know of any sources, please mention them in the comments.

Thanks, Suze for your interesting contribution!

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Using Rare Earth Magnets on Wild Gears appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I’d taken a number of medium-sized Wild Gears patterns, scanned them at high resolution, cleaned them up in Photohsop and shrunk them. Then I arranged them on a page in a triangular shape like a Christmas tree. When I printed it off, I thought, “It’s too fine, too small. Who’s going to want to color that?”

But then I put on my mother’s old reading glasses and started coloring it. I tried my fine-tip felt pens and some gel pens, and decided it was OK after all.

I’m a long way from done, however. It’s kind of like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. We do one a year, over the Christmas holidays. I may not be doing a jigsaw puzzle this year; I’ll be too busy coloring.

You can too. The page is available to buy as a printable instant download.

The post Christmas Tree Coloring Page appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I do know, however, that if your small gear isn’t much smaller than the hole in the larger gear you’re using, you get loops. This pattern has lots of loops, as it uses a #40 gear in a #45 hole. The larger wheel is 140 and the large ring is 180. All except the 40 are in Wild Gears’ Full Page Gear Set. The 40 came from the Plentiful Gear Set.

It’s fun to watch the pattern emerge, so I made a video of it (below). I messed it up 5 times before I gave up and used the blooper anyway. I tried again without the camera running and got it perfect the first time. Go figure.

The first time I discovered this combination of gears, I found the pattern interesting and coloured it. So I made it in black as a colouring page, and here are some results. A couple are done by an Australian correspondant, Suze.

In case you’d like to try colouring it yourself, you can buy the colouring page as an instant printable. Send me your pictures and I’ll add them to the gallery.

In the video, I’m using a Micron 05 pen (.45mm). This is a pricier pen than most that I use, but I wanted some archival ink to create more serious artwork with my Wild Gears and Spirograph. Christmas is coming, after all.

Colouring page available here.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Video: Loopy Wheel-Within-a-Wheel Design appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

It took 2½ hours to complete the intricate colouring page, which you can buy here if you want to try it yourself.

I had planned to speed up the video, because no one wants to watch me colour that long. My software (Adobe Premiere Elements) can speed up my footage 8 times. It made me look like a colouring whiz, but it was still 20 minutes long. It needed to be under 5 minutes. What to do, what to do?

So I cut out bits – lots of bits – and replaced them with a “clock wipe” transition to indicate the passage of time.

I used glitter gel pens for the foreground patterns, to make them pop, some metallic gel pens for highlights (the silver can actually cover the black lines), and dollar-store markers for the rest. At the end, I shot some footage at an angle to see the glitter catching the light. We didn’t have glitter or metallic pens when I was a kid.

Such frenzied activity required a fast, jazzy soundtrack, so that’s what I gave it. Sorry it isn’t very relaxing! But I’m getting over the cold, and at least I have something to show for it.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post High-Speed Colouring Video appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Then the fun began. I have to say I was surprised at how much I got into it. At first I wanted to give each “square” (never really square) a different colour from its neighbour as in a patchwork quilt. Then my sister Pam visited. She found a human-like figure in one of the designs, and brought it out with her colour choices and thickened some lines….

Well, duh! She showed me that you can take this much farther, if you have a true artist’s eye. Colour outside the lines!

Anyway, here are some examples that I’ve done. If you find this inspiring, you can buy my colouring pages right here. Give me encouragement and I’ll make more!

The post Colouring Wild Gears Designs appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

You can buy very nice blank cards and envelopes, pre-cut and folded, and draw designs on them. I found the Strathmore brand in an art supply shop, and I’ve seen them in office supply stores as well, or you can find Strathmore cards and envelopes on Amazon.

There are many different sizes of cards and a variety of paper types to choose from. Some have a textured surface, some are made of recycled fibers, some have “deckled” edges where the fibres hang out as if they were torn, as you can see in the photos. They all work. There are different colours too, from white to black. Some gel pens will mark on black.

I used metallic gel pens for most of these cards. They’re from an inexpensive set of gel pens I got on Amazon, though you could get them anywhere.

I added a matching design on the front and/or back of each envelope as well, making sure to leave room for the address. It was hard to draw over the deckle on the flap of the envelope, although it looks nice.

I’ve been pleased to use my cards for birthdays and thank-you’s, and they would also be suitable for sympathy cards. Even for Christmas, especially using stars. Here is an old video of mine on how to make a 5-pointed star with Spirograph. (That video now has 108,000 views and 525 likes. Wow, just wow.)

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Making Cards with Spirograph or Wild Gears appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.