Drawing

Drawing, pictorial representation by means of line on any surface. An artistic expression, drawing has developed in 3 main directions: as the independent, preparatory sketch for work in another medium; as the preliminary sketch eventually incorporated into another medium (for example, as the basic outline for a painting, fresco, or mural); and as an independently conceived and executed work. Little is known of the early history of drawing in European cultures. With the advent of the Renaissance and the emphasis on perspective and detailed rendering, drawing became the object of serious study. The availability of good-quality paper by the end of the 15th century also influenced the development of drawing. Drawing was the subject of several treatises by Renaissance theoreticians, and around the end of the 16th century the collection of drawings became a hobby of the rich. In the 18th century drawing became a prerequisite for the study of painting and sculpture in the academies. In England the art of caricature and political cartooning was brought to a high level in the satirical drawings of William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson, as it was in France by Honoré Daumier and in Spain by Francisco de Goya. The 19th-century neoclassicist Jean Ingres, the romanticist Théodore Géricault, and the early-modern masters Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Georges Seurat were eminent. Great draftsmen of the 20th century include Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, and Vasili Kandinsky. Drawing plays a great part in commercial art, illustrating advertisements, textbooks, brochures, and articles in magazines and periodicals. The availability of high-grade materials and the development of media have widened the modern graphic artist's choice of technique.