Drawing is a form of visual
expression and is one of the major forms within the visual arts. There are
several categories of drawing, including cartooning. Certain drawing
methods or approaches, such as "doodling," other informal kinds of
drawing, and 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, may or may not be considered part of
"drawing" as a "fine art". Likewise, tracing—drawing on a
thin piece of paper, sometimes designed for that purpose (tracing paper),
around the outline of preexisting shapes that show through the paper—is also
not considered fine art, although it may be part of the draftsman's
preparation.
The word drawing is
both (1) a noun and (2) the present-participle and gerund forms of the verbdraw.
To draw is to produce a drawing. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called
a sketch.
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Drawing 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, however, drawing is distinct from painting, even though similar media often are employed in both tasks. Dry media, normally associated with 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 under drawing 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.
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.