Art & Inspiration letters from NIGHTEͶ (Nathan Guilhot)
My personal magazine documenting my creative journey :)
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Good morning Reader! :)
I hope you’re having a lovely week!
Today I’m excited to share my latest little adventures: a very cute thermal printer, progress on my new illustration series, and even spent an entire day outside without touching my computer!
Let’s dive in!
My new thermal printer and its terrible app
This week I received a little gift for myself, something I’ve dreamed of having for a long time now: a thermal printer!
And this one is particularly cute :)
If you don’t know how thermal printers work, they’re the little printers usually used for receipts. They can only print in black and white, but their big advantage is that they don’t require any ink. Instead, they heat a special kind of paper to create different shades of black.
In my case, I’m mostly interested in printing little receipts, labels, and cool things like this:
spoiler for the next section!
I might have a few other projects for it in the future too ;)
But when I first received it, I was actually quite disappointed.
There was no normal way to plug it into a computer or send it an image. To print anything, you had to use the app provided by the seller.
Trying to print in colors directly doesn't give the best result
That was already a bummer, but you also had to create an account just to access the app, before being asked to share your location. Big red flag 😔
And somehow, they also managed to add a subscription and AI images to it. So I was really not enthusiastic about using that app for anything at all.
Thankfully, everything is hackable if you put your mind to it :)
I found several open-source projects for these printers, especially one called CatLabel, which provides a very nice interface that works on any laptop capable of connecting to the printer through Bluetooth.
It sounds like connecting and printing to one of these printers should be complicated, but it's is actually super simple. You only need to send the correct binary data directly to the Bluetooth device; there’s no password or special treatment, it’s just a standard protocol!
Printing the coloring pages works so well tho! You can find them at the link bellow for subscribers :)
After some troubleshooting it finally worked fully, and it was fantastic to be able to print anything that came to my mind without touching that terrible app again.
To celebrate, I made a new video showing you exactly how I did it. I also talk about the broader lesson behind this little project, and why I think it’s important to understand that technology isn’t magic. You can open things up, experiment, and make them work on your own terms.
But there is one big problem with thermal printers that compromises my original plan to use them at conventions and art markets.
Thermal prints fade over time :(
There’s a reason we mostly use them for receipts and nothing too important. The marks on the paper eventually fade and disappear...
I actually saw this happen today: I had made a collage with some of my prints, and everything underneath the tape started fading away :’)
yuk
I was excited to show you the whole thing, but it’s now ruined!
So I would definitely feel bad selling thermal prints for money. But who knows, maybe they could become a cute free gift or a little attraction at the table? I’m sure there’s something fun we can do with them, even if they won’t last forever!
it's a very good tool to leave silly messages before work
Continuing the purple cat’s adventure 💛🤍💜🖤
Last week, I started talking about my next illustration series and shared my frustration with the first piece!
The more I worked on it, the less I liked it. It was becoming too stiff and losing what made the original idea visually interesting.
After talking about it with a few friends and reflecting on it myself, I decided to go back and tweak one of the earlier sketches as the final version!
Because truthfully, people don’t care if every line is perfectly drawn or if every shape looks correct when you inspect it up close; at least when it feels good to look at! The tiny details and perfectly filled shapes aren’t necessarily what makes you love an image.
This version isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough :)
And I was able to complete two more illustrations this weekend! They’re simple, but I actually really like them.
As you can tell I really like to take screenshot with the UI around it 😄
I’m very curious to see how they’ll look once printed, and thankfully I won’t have to wait very long.
Next Sunday, I’m going to Targi Unikatów, an art market that we were able to join almost at the last minute!
After coming back from Ryucon, I said that I wanted to prepare more things for the next event and finally print some of my recent illustrations. This will be my opportunity to do exactly that, including this new series.
I’m going to place the order very soon so everything can be ready on time. Fingers crossed :’)
Touching some grass, finally
Last Saturday, I went outside and didn’t touch my computer for the entire day, which honestly doesn’t happen often enough.
We went to the Polish countryside for what was supposed to be a short trip to deal with the catering for our wedding, since we’re getting married in that town.
But we ended up staying for almost the whole day, enjoying the beautiful weather and some good company :)
It was very pleasant to have time for a break and reflect a bit on everything I’ve been doing recently. I think I really needed that.
Amongst other things it made me want to experiment more with sketching from life.
You see, I really enjoy the style I have in my sketchbook, and I think it’s very fun to draw that way. But I don’t really have a digital equivalent yet.
So when I came back, I tried drawing some of those pictures using different brushes for once :)
Pretty modest results, but it was fun to do! What do you think? Should I do more things like this?
This week’s videos ▶️
One thing I sure didn’t do that Saturday was work on my YouTube channel. I didn’t post a video that day, and I actually missed a couple of other days during the week*.
But honestly, spending time with friends is definitely more important than whatever I’m doing on YouTube. This might actually be a sign that I need to ease things off after 70+ videos, but I’m certainly not running out of things to say :)
Actually this week’s videos might be especially interesting if you’re learning a language, because I made a three-part series documenting my own experience.
