Getting started with ggsketch

A first plot

geom_sketch_col() draws bars with a roughened outline and a hachure (pencil-shading) fill:

df <- data.frame(product = c("Alpha", "Bravo", "Charlie", "Delta"),
                 units   = c(34, 51, 22, 47))

ggplot(df, aes(product, units)) +
  geom_sketch_col(fill = "#7BAFD4", seed = 1L) +
  labs(title = "Units sold") +
  theme_sketch()

Reproducible wobble

The sketch look is random, but seeded — a given seed always produces the same drawing, so your figures are reproducible. Change the seed for a fresh “hand”.

base <- ggplot(df, aes(product, units)) + theme_sketch()
base + geom_sketch_col(seed = 1L) + labs(subtitle = "seed = 1")

base + geom_sketch_col(seed = 7L) + labs(subtitle = "seed = 7")

Set a session-wide default with options(ggsketch.seed = 1L).

The roughness dial

roughness controls how far points are displaced (0 = ruler-straight):

x <- seq(0, 10, length.out = 40)
d <- data.frame(x = x, y = sin(x))

ggplot(d, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_sketch_line(aes(colour = "0.0"), roughness = 0,   seed = 2) +
  geom_sketch_line(aes(colour = "1.5"), roughness = 1.5, seed = 2) +
  geom_sketch_line(aes(colour = "4.0"), roughness = 4,   seed = 2) +
  scale_colour_brewer("roughness", palette = "Set1") +
  theme_sketch()

Fill styles

Filled geoms (geom_sketch_col(), geom_sketch_rect(), geom_sketch_polygon(), …) take a fill_style:

fill_style is a layer parameter, so to show several you draw one layer (or panel) per style. Here is cross_hatch:

bars <- data.frame(x = c("A", "B", "C"), y = c(4, 6, 3))
ggplot(bars, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_sketch_col(fill = "#E8A87C", fill_style = "cross_hatch", seed = 4) +
  labs(title = "cross_hatch") +
  theme_sketch()

The available styles are "hachure", "cross_hatch", "zigzag", "zigzag_line", "scribble", "dots", "dashed", and "solid" — plus a painted "watercolor" wash.

Composing like any ggplot2 layer

Sketch geoms respect facets, scales, and coords:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) +
  geom_sketch_point(size = 2.5, colour = "#34495E", seed = 9) +
  geom_sketch_smooth(method = "lm", formula = y ~ x, seed = 10) +
  facet_wrap(~am, labeller = label_both) +
  theme_sketch()

Annotations and a dark theme

ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) +
  geom_sketch_point(colour = "#E8E6DF", seed = 1L) +
  annotate_sketch("rect", xmin = 3, xmax = 4, ymin = 15, ymax = 22,
                  fill = NA, colour = "#FFD166", seed = 2L) +
  theme_sketch(dark = TRUE)

Beyond the basics

ggsketch covers far more than bars and lines: distribution geoms (violin, ridgeline, beeswarm, boxplot), part-to-whole charts (pie, waffle, treemap), streamgraphs, calendar heatmaps, an engraving / tonal-shading family, and a content-aware annotation toolkit (arrows, callouts, sticky notes, brackets, hull marks). The drawing look extends too — pencil / ink / brush / charcoal media, watercolour fills, textured paper grounds, hand-drawn coords, and an opt-in tremor that makes long strokes drift and tire. Bars, points, lines, areas, boxplots, labels and maps also come in interactive versions for ggiraph, with tooltips and hover highlighting. The gallery shows every geom; the other articles cover fill styles, theming, and the shared sketch controls in depth.

Where the look comes from

ggsketch is built in three layers: pure geometry (numbers → numbers), grid grobs that roughen in device-inch space inside makeContent(), and ggproto geoms. The algorithms are reimplemented in original R from the published descriptions of the rough.js algorithms and the hachure approach of Wood et al.; no rough.js source is included. See inst/NOTICE.