The seeds for this project were planted last summer, during a mid-career retrospective at Artverse gallery in Paris. It was a meaningful moment for me, sharing thirty years of my artwork in a single space, with early traditional prints hanging alongside purely digital pieces. Seeing those bodies of work together created juxtapositions and resonances I hadn't experienced before. For most of my career I have been striving for greater precision in my art. I made every effort to remove the visible evidence of my hand or the materials, considering it an imperfection. That pursuit is what led me away from physical practices and toward digital techniques, where I could more closely achieve the ideal version of what I was trying to express. But seeing that early work in a new light, I found myself drawn to the human element as an interesting and expressive quality rather than a flaw to overcome.

From Paris, I continued to Basel Switzerland, where I first met Sofie Mart at the Kate Vass booth during the Digital Art Mile. Sofie was demonstrating her custom plotter, and I had already been experimenting with linear drawing techniques using graphite pencils on my own plotter. We discussed the possibility of collaborating together and stayed in touch. In early 2026, I needed to travel to Munich for other business and used the opportunity to visit Sofie at Uncorporated Studio in Zurich. Over several days we conducted media studies with colored pencils and paper, experimented with plotter routines for automated pencil sharpening, and developed algorithm optimizations for drawing order, direction, and color uniformity. I returned home and began formally developing Mechanical Drawings with this newfound knowledge and experience.