Is there a more automated way to have a stipple fill?

I am trying to get this stippling effect, and right now I am basically putting each dot (arrow) in place by hand, with duplicate or clone..  I have tried using a brush and that works ok, I have tried playing with the fills but I cannot get an effect I am happy with where the shadowing is heavier along the edge of the vector and lighter as it gets further from a respective edge.. I have also tried using the mesh fills but I cannot get those to work right, even if my life depended on it... I feel like this would be a very simple fill option, where I can say the shading goes from dark gray to light gray over this distance from any edge of the vector but I cannot seem to find anything that will work that I am happy with besides hand placement of each dot... The other thing I was thinking was, is there some sort of way to just click my mouse or my wacom tablet pen in individual spots and get the circles to appear?... I wanted to try the spray paint, but I cant seem to find a good spray pattern that would allow me to make these fills look right... The downside is this takes an immense amount of time that I do not have!  Is there anything I can do to improve my fills to give them a 3-d fill. I cannot thank you all enough in advance!