Hello Daniel,
I don't think you're going to get away without using a library.
Libs are fine (if they run without to much trouble)
Cairo is good for drawing; it has a very easy to learn API. I had a binding, but haven't touched it in ages; it's in bindings on dsource.org if you want to take a crack at it. Failing that, the C api isn't that hard to learn. One issue is that it doesn't have any windowing functions. If you don't need live updates, you could always cheat by generating a PNG (which it can do out of the box) and then use the system image viewer to open it.
final target is a dead tree so that's fine.
Some URLs: Cairo: http://www.cairographics.org/ Old cairo binding (also includes a basic tutorial): http://dsource.org/projects/bindings/browser/trunk/cairo Win32 libraries (you want cairo, libpng and zlib): http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/dependencies/
it seems to be wanting libpng13.dll and I can't seem to find that.
-- Daniel
