Honest question. Outside of matlab and octave (both of which fall down in a bunch of other obvious areas), what scripting language offers anything close to an alternative to numpy/scipy?
I know, it's a terrible language, but it is a great collection of capabilities. Quintessential example of love/hate.
I'm not certain what sort of graphics work you are considering, but if it involves a lot of nonlinearity or higher level functions, it may be a good fit.
The language is in active development, although it is still early days with library support currently lacking (namely, a good plotting library).