Grains of Sand

I'm working on a couple scribble drawing projects right now. One project is taking my representations of natural objects to a very basic level: drawing grains of sand or bits of dirt.

Each grain is to scale with my other large drawings.

For me, this is an obvious progression. I am interested in bringing the physical world into cyberspace and what better place to start than from such a basic building block as dirt. Plus I'd really like to see what a "dirty" browser window would look like!

Sketches

Here are two sketches I've recently done. Using only lines to make my drawings is my current answer to two important questions associated with computer-aided drawing:

1.)How can an artist get past the stigma that using the computer to draw is merely a shortcut?

2.) How can an artist have the most possible control over their drawing on the computer when computer programmers (artists?) have already decided most of a computer's functionality for you? ie: those who make the drawing software basically already decided what the circle tool does, and the parameters of the paint bucket tool.

My solution is drawing with one pixel-wide lines. I do this because then "physically" I touch every pixel that is modified in the drawing, undermining the idea that computer drawing is a shortcut. And the line is a very basic function... it's about as close to full control as an artist can get while still maintaining a free-hand drawing experience on a computer. Also, computers do lines very well. I feel like lines are an innate action for computers.