Drawing Machines

I've been using a pen plotter to draw with lately. I like drawing but hate redrawing. I want to be able to experiment with different inks and papers, also to avoid hand cramping as much as I can.

I have an iPad Mini and Apple Pencil, and use Affinity Designer for lots of other stuff, it has a vector pencil tool and will just get out of the way and let me draw. So I tried that, and it's brilliant! I can draw the way I normally do on paper but now I get a recording of me doing the drawing as well as the drawing itself. The only set up I need to do is set the vector pencil stroke to be the same thickness as the pen I'm going to use in the plotter, that way I can get the 'feel' of the drawing as I do it. On the 'drips' drawing, the iPad was seriously struggling, so I had to draw parts of the image separately and combine them at the end.

The huge advantage here, other than reproducibility, is that it saves me from smudging the drawing with my hands. It doesn't quite save me from the hand cramps though (ouch) but I only need to suffer from those once per drawing.

One other advantage, I was using Rotring isograph pens (because they're refillable and last ages) but whenever I try using those by hand I can't keep them upright enough and scratch the paper too much. Not a nice feeling or aesthetic. There is a bit of scratchyness on some of the denser areas, but nothing too serious.

All in all, I'm pleased with it. I feel inspired to do more.