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

Eva Hesse
*Untitled* (1967)
Tate
© The estate of Eva Hesse, courtesy Hauser & Wirth, Zürich

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.

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Chalk

Chalk is a soft powdery white or off-white writing or drawing material in crayon form, generally used on a blackboard or other dark surface

Charcoal

Charcoal is a black crumbly drawing material made of carbon and often used for sketching and under-drawing for paintings, although can also be used to create more finished drawings

Graphite

Graphite is a metallic grey writing and drawing material most commonly used in pencil form – though graphite powder is also used by artists as a drawing material

Ink

Ink is an ancient writing and drawing medium in liquid or paste form, traditionally black or brown in colour – though it can also contain coloured dyes or pigments

Pastel

Pastel is a coloured drawing medium made from pure coloured pigment mixed with a binder to form a stick

Vanishing point

The point at which receding parallel lines viewed in perspective appear to converge

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is an Italian term which translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade in a painting or drawing

Selected artists who draw

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Sculpture and the scalpel

Barbara Hepworth

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’

Photograph of Rachel Whitereads studio by Nigel Shafran 2010

‘The Process of Drawing is like Writing a Diary: It's a Nice Way of Thinking About Time Passing’

Bice Curiger

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.

Thinking drawing

Vija Celmins and Simon Grant1

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.