Ink, pencil, crayon, charcoal and chalk are the most commonly used materials, but drawings can be made with or in combination with paint and any other wet or dry media.
Drawing
Drawing is essentially a technique in which images are depicted on a surface by making lines, though drawings can also contain tonal areas, washes and other non-linear marks
Related materials and techniques
Selected artists who draw
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Sculpture and the scalpel
Many of us are familiar with Barbara Hepworth’s drawings of surgeons and staff in operating theatres, which were done in various hospitals over a number of years. But what did the sculptor think about the process? As this extract from a lecture she gave to a group of surgeons in c.1953, recently published for the first time, reveals, her experience taught her of the affinities between the artist and the surgeon, both of whom seek ‘to restore and to maintain the beauty and grace of the human mind and body’
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‘The Process of Drawing is like Writing a Diary: It's a Nice Way of Thinking About Time Passing’
To coincide with Tate Britain’s exhibition of the artist’s drawings, as well as the objects from her personal collection that she has acquired over the years, Tate Etc. visits Rachel Whiteread in her studio and talks to her about the controversies that accompanied her early large-scale work, the importance of her drawings, how she got a cast of Peter Sellers’s nose and why she continues to collect strange items from around the world.
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Thinking drawing
Vija Celmins was born in Latvia in 1938, fled with her family to Germany in advance of the Soviet army in 1944 and emigrated to the USA in 1948. Since the early 1960s she has made intricate black-and-white drawings of a small range of subjects – seascapes, night skies, the desert floor – some of which have taken a year to complete. This exclusive interview coincided with her drawings retrospective at the Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Explore this term
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Drawing in the Dark
Susan Morris approaches the subject of involuntary drawing from the point of view of an artist trying to make a visual record of that which escapes or exceeds deliberate action or conscious intention. In this paper Morris discusses her own work in the context of a wider consideration of the theme, which touches on the work of other artists as well as the writing of psychoanalysts, philosophers and art historians.
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Cinematic Drawing in a Digital Age
Developed in relation to works by Tacita Dean and William Kentridge, this article explores the way in which the arrival of digital technology has impacted upon our conception of drawing, suggesting its alignment with older, ‘analogue’ technologies, particularly film.
Selected artworks in the collection
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Cornelia Parker CBE RA Pornographic Drawing
1996 -
Rebecca Horn Unicorn
1968–9 -
Leonora Carrington I am an Amateur of Velocipedes
1941 -
Leon Kossoff Drawing for ‘Children’s Swimming Pool’
1971 -
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt Study of a Girl’s Head
1866 -
Günter Brus, Arnulf Rainer No, Daphne, No!
1984 -
Richard Deacon Untitled Drawing
1980
Drawing at Tate
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Tate Britain
Exhibition
Rachel Whiteread Drawings
8 Sep 2010 – 16 Jan 2011Rachel Whiteread Drawings; past exhibition at Tate Britain
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Tate Liverpool
Exhibition
Tracing the Century: Drawing as a Catalyst for Change
16 Nov 2012 – 20 Jan 2013Tracing the Century: Drawing as a Catalyst for Change exhibition at Tate Liverpool 16 November 2012 – 20 January 2013
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Tate Britain
Exhibition
Sculpture and Drawings by Henry Moore
2 May – 29 Jul 1951Sculpture and Drawings by Henry Moore; 1951 exhibition at Tate Gallery