February 15, 2026
Plot twist: the bot has a signature
I Gave Claude Access to My Pen Plotter
AI draws its "soul" with a pen — comments swing from museum vibes to pelican memes
TLDR: An AI designed a pen‑drawn self‑portrait that a human plotted, complete with a poetic backstory and tidy paper sizing. Comments split between awe (gallery ideas, retro hardware dreams) and exasperation (enough chat logs already), with jokes about pelicans on bikes and AI stealing the job of artist statements.
A human gave Claude Code, an AI, a very analog challenge: design a pen-and-ink “self‑portrait,” and the human’s plotter would draw it. Claude’s answer? A poetic manifesto about being a process, then an SVG design—golden spiral, branching lines, faint geometry—dubbed “Emergence,” even resized to A5 paper like a perfectionist. Two signed prints later, the internet had thoughts.
Nostalgia nerds rallied, with one flexing an 80s HP plotter and betting Claude could speak HPGL—old-school plotter language—complete with a link to the classic hardware. Artsy types called it “brilliant,” pitching a new gallery tradition: redo the self‑portrait every six months and hang the evolution. Futurists pushed it further: give a “body” to the chatbot—basically a robot with a pen—and let it draw itself for real.
But the snark was loud. One commenter loved the images but would “throw [their] laptop in the ocean” before reading another AI chat log. Another joked the real disruption isn’t art—it’s artist statements, because Claude wrote a better one than most humans. Meanwhile, meme lords demanded a pelican on a bicycle, because internet. The vibe: part wonder, part eye‑roll, part “shut up and draw.”
Key Points
- •The author interfaced between Claude Code and a pen plotter to produce physical drawings from AI-generated SVGs.
- •Claude designed a self-portrait concept called “Emergence,” featuring a golden spiral and branching structures.
- •The workflow included iterative feedback via photos of the plots pasted into the Claude session.
- •Claude updated the SVG to A5 paper dimensions (148mm × 210mm), adjusting the viewBox and layout.
- •In total, Claude produced and signed two drawings and wrote a reflective post about the session.