Awesome Drawing

These smartly-designed tools make it easy to crank out straight lines, circles, grids, and other smooth and consistent drawings. The complete set consists of a straightedge and a curved arm, and a swiveling base. Available in aluminum or stainless steel.

Wacom’s entry-level Cintiq 16 has a 15.6″ 1080p non-touchscreen display. It has an anti-glare parallax coating to mimic the look and feel of paper. It comes with the Pro Pen 2, which has 8,192 levels of sensitivity, low activation force and tilt recognition.

Stuart Semple’s Culture Hustle is known for making the pinkest pink paint available. He sells it at an affordable price too. Now he’s helping make the blackest commercially available black paint, and wants everyone to get their hands on it as well.

iskn’s Slate Repaper is a graphics tablet that lets you use real pens and paper. It comes with a magnetic ring that you put around your pen of choice to capture your strokes, and offers pressure sensitivity. It can be used with PCs or mobile devices. Drops 2019 for $200.

ft Robotics shows off a nifty Arduino Mega and Fischertechnik based plotter. Unlike other drawing machines which are driven by cartesian coordinates, this one uses polar coordinates. It draws by moving a pen along one axis, while a turntable rotates beneath its retractable pen.

Artist Marcello Barenghi presents a time-lapse video of him creating a photorealistic image of a fried egg using colored pencils, paints, and airbrushing. The simulated shine is so impressive that we want to grab a fork right now and poke it into our screen. Breakfast time!

This unique writing instrument allows artists to draw with a stippling technique without having to constantly raise and lower the pen. The rechargeable pen vibrates its tip rapidly to drop dots of ink onto the page. Reduced price available for a limited time from Massdrop.

This mobile app makes learning to draw a lot easier and more fun. It uses your phone’s camera so you can overlay an image that you want to copy or use as a template and then sketch over that in real-time. It’s available for both iOS and Android.

Ivan Miranda made a robot that can draw images on sand by etching one line at a time. It does take its time, and it would be nice if he could make it more portable and freewheeling, but it’s still a neat build. Skip to 1:40 to see the robot in action.

Jayden’s Apple makes nifty brass stencils that are perfect for sketch notebooks. The designs include arrows, flourishes, lettering, plants, speech bubbles, and more. The Journal Essential stencil kit includes elements for drawing checklists, calendars, circles, and grids.

We’ve seen DOOM run on everything from a calculator to a toaster. But this is the first time we’ve seen the game on an Etch A Sketch. We’re impressed with lily-liver’s ability to replicate the game’s screen on the toy, even if he cheated a bit by tracing the diagonal lines.

Sped up footage of drawings being created by one of artist James Nolan Gandy’s mechanical drawing machines. A complex series of gears, pulleys, and belts drives the pen mechanism to create spirograph-like images. Check out more of his images and videos on his Instagram page.

Evil Mad Scientist Labs‘ borderline magical AxiDraw now has a variant that reaches up to two sheets of US Letter or A4 in one go, making it faster and more efficient. Just like the V3, it can use normal pens and markers to make “handwritten” letters and drawings.

This cable-driven machine holds a pen in its grip and can not only draw intricate and detailed lettering, but can emulate the imperfections of handwriting. It can create calligraphy and draw images as well. Contact ZarPlotter if you’re interested in purchasing one.

Artist Kasey Golden issued herself a challenge – to see just how small she could draw an image. She starts out sketching her character “Hatch” on a 5″x7″ sheet of paper, then draws it on progressively smaller and smaller pieces, which eventually need a magnifying glass to be seen.

We’ve been using graphic design tools like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for years, but we still suck at using the pen tool. If you find it as challenging as we do, check out this online game, which will turn you into a curve-drawing master in no time.

The classic Spirograph is a childhood favorite drawing toy, but its plastic discs are easy to crack. This special edition includes nine drawing wheels and a gear wheel made from sturdy die-cast metal, as well as sticky Spiro-Putty to eliminate holes in your paper.

Given the dearth of typewriters in the modern workplace, we’re surprised that Liquid Paper is even still a thing. Draw with Jazza shows how the opaque white correction fluid can be used to draw intricate works of art – assuming you have his mad drawing skills, that is.

WIRED UK introduces us to artist Patrick Tresset, whose latest exhibition includes a classroom filled with robotic “students” each of which has been equipped with a pen and paper. While the students doodle, three smarter robots at the head of the class draw portraits.

Another slick multitool wallet card from the folks behind the MRF credit card multitool. This anodized aluminum tool is focused on creative uses, functioning as a compass, protractor, t-square, ruler, sketch tool, smartphone stand, headphone cord wrap, and a bottle opener.

Pablo Garcia’s modern take on the camera lucida – a 19th century drawing tool that uses mirrors to project a reflection of what’s in front of you to the surface below, effectively giving you a live stencil. This new NeoLucida has a larger viewfinder.

It’s far from perfect, but Google’s experimental web app has a pretty nifty trick up its sleeve – it can transform rough doodles into neat line art by using machine-learning algorithms to recognize shapes and replace them with professionally drawn illustrations.

Artist Peter Draws creates a wonderful line art illustration using “invisible” ink under a black light. Watching the ink flow off of his glass pen tip into the water is just as mesmerizing as onto the canvas itself. His charming and soothing narration definitely reminds us of Bob Ross.