Drawing

About

Drawing is the most direct of the visual arts: marks made with a dry or liquid medium, usually on paper, where line and tone carry the image. Renaissance theorists prized disegno, both drawing and design, as the root of painting, sculpture and architecture. Materials give each sheet its character. Silverpoint leaves a fine grey line that cannot be erased; red and black chalk suit soft modelling of flesh; pen and ink allow speed and emphasis, often with ink washes.

Many great drawings began as studies, but collectors prized them early for their own sake. Jean-Antoine Watteau combined red, black and white chalks in lively figure sheets; Giambattista Tiepolo dashed off pen-and-wash inventions; Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres made precise graphite portraits of visitors to Rome; Jean-François Millet drew peasants in dusky conté crayon. In 1968 Sol LeWitt turned drawing into a set of instructions, carried out on the wall by others.