The New Art Magazine VOL34
D
rawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Instruments used include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers, styluses, and various metals (such as silverpoint). An artist who practices or works in drawing may be called a draftsman or draughtsman. A small amount of material is released onto a surface, leaving a visible mark. The most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed almost anything. The medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas. The wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing more common than other media. Drawing is one of the major forms of expression within the visual arts, and is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper. Traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour,while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology, drawing is distinct from painting, even though similar media often are employed in both tasks. Dry media, normally associated with PAGE 4
The New Art Magazine VOL34 drawing, such as chalk, may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a liquid medium, applied with brushes or pens. Similar supports likewise can serve both: painting generally involves the application of liquid paint onto prepared canvas or panels, but sometimes an underdrawing is drawn first on that same support. Drawing is often exploratory, with considerable emphasis on observation, problem-solving and composition.
Drawing is also regularly used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Drawings created for these purposes are called studies. There are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning, doodling and shading. There are also many drawing methods, such as line drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania (in which dots are made at the sites of impurities in a blank sheet of paper, and lines are then made
between the dots), and tracing (drawing on a translucent paper, such as tracing paper, around the outline of preexisting shapes that show through the paper). A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch. In fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery, circuitry and other things are often called “drawings� even when they have been transferred to another medium by printing. Sketches and paintings have been produced since prehistoric times, as demonstrated by cave and rock paintings. By the 12th to 13th centuries A.D., monks were preparing illuminated manuscripts on vellum and parchment in monasteries throughout Europe and were using lead styli to draw lines for their writings and for the outlines for their illuminations. Soon artists generally were using silverpoint to make drawings and underdrawings. Initially they used and re-used wooden tablets with prepared ground for these drawings.When paper became generally available, from the 14th century onwards, artists’ drawings, both preparatory studies and finished works, became increasingly common.
Linear perspective is a method of portraying objects on a flat surface so that the dimensions shrink with distance. Each set of parallel, straight edges of any object, whether a building or a table, will follow lines that eventually converge at a vanishing point. Typically this point of convergence will be along the horizon, as buildings are built level with the flat surface. When multiple structures are aligned with each other, such as buildings along a street, the horizontal tops and bottoms of the structures will all typically converge at a vanishing point. Sketches and Two-point perspective paintings have been produced since predrawing historic times, as demWhen both the fronts and sides of a build- onstrated by cave and rock paintings ing are drawn, then the parallel lines forming a side converge at a second point along the horizon (which may be off the drawing paper.) This is a two-point perspective. Converging the vertical lines to a third point above or below the horizon then produces a three-point perspective. Depth can also be portrayed by several techniques in addition to the perspective approach A small amount of above. Objects of similar material is released onto size should appear ever a surface, leaving a vissmaller the further they ible mark are from the viewer. Thus the back wheel of a cart will appear slightly smaller than the front wheel. Depth can be portrayed through the use of texture. As the texture of an object gets further away it becomes more compressed and busy, taking on an entirely different character than if
Shading is the technique of varying the tonal values on the paper to represent the shade of the material as well as the placement of the shadows. Careful attention to reflected light, shadows and highlights can result in a very realistic rendition of the image. PAGE 5