Art Encyclopedia - Drawing

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Drawing
The word 'drawing' is defined as the act of making marks on a surface to create an image, form or shape. Used as a noun the word 'drawing' is also used as a name for the produced image.

Drawing differs from painting in that painting generally involves the layering of pigments on a surface by means of a brush whereas drawing entails the marking of lines onto a surface. In art drawings may be representational, realistic, architectural, looser approximations of reality or abstract.

Mediums used to create drawings can either be dry such as graphite, charcoal and pencil or they can be water-based such as markers, pen and ink. A large variety of paper are used for drawing with different sizes and qualities of paper available. Paper can range in quality from newspaper grade to high quality and relative expansive paper usually sold as individual sheets. Different textures of paper are also available with smooth paper good for rendering fine detail and more coarse paper useful for producing drawings with deeper contrast.

In art notable draftsmen include Michelangelo Buonarroti, Salvador Dalí, Albrecht Dürer, M. C. Escher, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrew Loomis, Santiago Martinez Delgado, Rembrandt and Eugeen Van Mieghem.