Doug MacDowell writes about drawing data visualisations completely by hand.

“What are you working on these days?”
“Data visualizations.” I told him.
“Ah, you using algorithms, machine learning, cloud computing, things like that?”
“No.” I said. “I’m just trying to draw a line graph.”

My neighbor thought I was getting into some complex sh**. But what’s been more interesting to me lately than using […] is learning to draw data by hand. 50 Hours to Draw Some Lines is about spending more than a week on something that software can accomplish in 20 minutes - and a catalog of resources and methods acquired along the way.