Unable to add a proper signature in Pages

With Pages v14.4 for iPadOS, and with Scribble disabled in the Apple Pencil settings, I click on the drawing icon on the Pages document toolbar, and select Drawing from its menu. That inserts a large drawing area into the document.

I then click on the Apple pencil to select the pen tool (and optionally a signature color) and proceed to write the signature in the drawing box — which I then scale diagonally to hug the signature. When I click Done, I now have a signature box that I can drag to a desired position in the document.

I just did this on my M4 iPad Pro running iPadOS 26.1, but I see no reason why this cannot work on iPadOS 18.*.

When you decide to upgrade to iPadOS 26.1 or later, there is a new Preview application that can open a PDF exported from Pages and in which you can also apply an existing or new signature annotation onto the PDF.