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ggsketch ggsketch hex logo

R-CMD-check Lifecycle: experimental License: MIT pkgdown site

Grammar-native, hand-drawn geoms for ggplot2 - the rough.js sketch aesthetic in pure R, with no JavaScript and no browser.

Sketchy hachure-filled violin plots of highway mpg by vehicle class, with a handwriting-font title

ggsketch gives you ggplot2 geoms (geom_sketch_col(), geom_sketch_line(), geom_sketch_point(), …) that render with a wobbly, hand-drawn look: roughened double-stroke outlines and hachure / cross-hatch / zigzag / dots / dashed fills. It even shades by tonal engraving — continuous tone built from hatch-line density, the way an etcher or banknote engraver works (geom_sketch_engrave()), something the fill-pattern packages can’t do because they tile a motif rather than compute tone. Because the geoms are real grid grobs wrapped in ggproto, they compose with aes(), stats, scales, facets, and coords, and draw correctly on every R graphics device — screen, PNG, PDF, and SVG.

Why another sketch package?

ggsketch ggrough
Approach Native ggplot2 geoms (grid grobs) Post-hoc convert a finished plot to SVG, redraw in HTML Canvas
Output Any device: screen / PNG / PDF / SVG HTML widget only (breaks static PDF/PNG)
Composes with aes() / stats / scales / facets Yes No (operates on the rendered plot)
JavaScript / browser None Requires rough.js in a browser
Status Active Maintainer marks it dormant (“doesn’t work with recent releases of ggplot2”)

The ggrough maintainer himself notes that “a nice way to create sketchy visualisations would be a neat addition to the {ggplot2} ecosystem.” ggsketch fills that gap with native geoms.

Installation

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("orijitghosh/ggsketch")

ggsketch is pure R (NeedsCompilation: no); its only hard dependencies are ggplot2, grid, rlang, scales, cli, and withr.

Full documentation and a gallery of every geom: https://orijitghosh.github.io/ggsketch/.

Quick start

library(ggplot2)
library(ggsketch)

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()

Every randomized routine is seeded, so a given seed always produces the same wobble — your plots are reproducible. Set a session-wide default with options(ggsketch.seed = 1L).

Showcase

Discrete fills map straight through aes(fill = …), and any geom accepts a stat - roughened columns coloured by a Brewer palette, and an Old Faithful histogram:

Hand-drawn bar chart with bars coloured by a discrete fill scale Sketchy histogram of Old Faithful eruption times

Points, a marginal rug, and a hand-drawn linear fit compose like any other layers; geom_sketch_bracket() adds significance brackets for pairwise comparisons:

Sketchy scatter of weight vs mpg with a marginal rug and a roughened linear fit Sketchy boxplots by drivetrain annotated with hand-drawn significance brackets

Every fill style works on every filled geom - here fill_style = "hachure" boxplots across vehicle classes:

Hachure-filled sketch boxplots of highway mpg by vehicle class

The 2.0 line adds whole chart families that compose with + — here a hierarchy as a hand-drawn sunburst, and weighted flows as a chord diagram:

Hand-drawn sunburst chart of headcount nested by region, department and team Hand-drawn chord diagram of trade flows between continents

It also simulates the medium, not just the line. The "watercolor" fill paints translucent washes that bleed wet-on-wet where regions overlap — mingling into new colours — and feather along the paper tooth set by theme_sketch(paper = ):

Overlapping translucent watercolour petals that blend into new colours where they meet, feathered against an aged-paper ground

The geoms

Family Geoms
Lines & points geom_sketch_line(), geom_sketch_path(), geom_sketch_point()
Bars & tiles geom_sketch_col(), geom_sketch_bar(), geom_sketch_rect(), geom_sketch_tile(), geom_sketch_lollipop()
Areas & curves geom_sketch_polygon(), geom_sketch_ribbon(), geom_sketch_area(), geom_sketch_density(), geom_sketch_smooth()
Distributions geom_sketch_histogram(), geom_sketch_violin(), geom_sketch_boxplot(), geom_sketch_beeswarm(), geom_sketch_ridgeline(), geom_sketch_dotplot(), geom_sketch_ecdf()
Comparisons & change geom_sketch_dumbbell(), geom_sketch_slope(), geom_sketch_bump(), geom_sketch_waterfall(), geom_sketch_funnel(), geom_sketch_pyramid()
Circular & composed geom_sketch_circle(), geom_sketch_ellipse(), geom_sketch_segment(), geom_sketch_step()
Engraving & tone geom_sketch_engrave() (shade an x/y/z surface by hatch-line density), geom_sketch_shade() (aes(tone = …) value → density), scale_engrave()
Charts & diagrams geom_sketch_pie(), geom_sketch_waffle(), geom_sketch_treemap(), geom_sketch_sunburst(), geom_sketch_radar(), geom_sketch_chord(), geom_sketch_arc_diagram(), geom_sketch_alluvial(), geom_sketch_parallel(), geom_sketch_mosaic(), geom_sketch_marimekko(), geom_sketch_rose(), geom_sketch_calendar(), geom_sketch_gantt(), geom_sketch_dendrogram()
Networks & maps geom_sketch_edge() / sketch_graph() (force-directed layout, no graph dep), geom_sketch_sf() (hand-drawn simple-features maps)
Motion animate_sketch() (boiling-line shimmer or draw-on reveal → GIF)
Helpers & annotation annotate_sketch(), geom_sketch_bracket() (significance brackets), annotate_sketch_arrow() / annotate_sketch_callout() (content-aware pointers), annotate_sketch_highlight() / annotate_sketch_underline() (marker emphasis), geom_sketch_text_repel() (non-overlapping labels), theme_sketch(), sketch_style() (one-call style presets), ggsketch_save()
Frame & scales element_sketch_line(), element_sketch_rect() (via theme_sketch(rough_frame = TRUE)), coord_sketch() / coord_sketch_polar(), scale_colour_sketch(), scale_fill_sketch(), scale_medium_discrete() (mappable drawing media), register_sketch_font()

Shared sketch parameters

Parameter Meaning
roughness How far points are jittered (0 = ruler-straight, ~1 default, >3 loose)
bowing How much segments bow outward
n_passes Overlaid strokes (2 = the classic “double stroke”)
seed Integer for reproducible wobble
fill_style "hachure", "cross_hatch", "zigzag", "zigzag_line", "scribble", "dots", "dashed", "stipple", "pencil_shade", "solid", "watercolor"
hachure_angle, hachure_gap, fill_weight Fill line angle, spacing, and weight

How it works

Three layers, kept strictly separate:

  1. Layer 1 — pure geometry (R/core-*.R): numbers → numbers. Seeded roughening, ellipse/Bézier sampling, and an Active-Edge-Table scan-line hachure filler that handles concave polygons. No grid, no ggplot2.
  2. Layer 2 — grid grobs (R/grob-*.R): makeContent() converts to device inches and re-roughens at the real render size, so resizing re-draws cleanly.
  3. Layer 3 — ggproto geoms (R/geom-*.R): standard ggplot2 extension API.

Roughening always happens in inch space, so the look is consistent across aspect ratios and devices.

Credits & non-affiliation

The algorithms are reimplemented in original R from the published descriptions of the rough.js algorithms (Preet Shihn, 2020) and the hachure approach of Wood et al. No rough.js source is vendored, copied, or translated, and no JavaScript ships in this package. See inst/NOTICE.

ggsketch is an independent R package reimplementing the hand-drawn sketch aesthetic from first principles. It is not affiliated with, derived from, or endorsed by the rough.js project, ggrough, or any related JavaScript libraries.

rough.js is © Preet Shihn and licensed MIT. ggsketch is licensed MIT.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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