A classic drawing is an artwork created from lines or areas of tone created with a drawing instrument such as a graphite pencil, charcoal, colored pencil, silverpoint, eraser, dry pastel, or another dry medium on a piece of paper. In a broader definition of the term, a drawing is a two-dimensional artwork created from lines or tone that is dominated by a dry medium but can include wet mediums such as ink, and washes of paint.
Drawing as formal artistic creation might be defined as the primarily linear rendition of objects in the visible world, as well as of concepts, thoughts, attitudes, emotions, and fantasies given visual form, of symbols and even of abstract forms. This definition, however, applies to all graphic arts and techniques that are characterized by an emphasis on form or shape rather than mass and colour, as in painting. Drawing as such differs from graphic printing processes in that a direct relationship exists between production and result. Drawing, in short, is the end product of a successive effort applied directly to the carrier. Whereas a drawing may form the basis for reproduction or copying, it is nonetheless unique by its very nature
Although not every artwork has been preceded by a drawing in the form of a preliminary sketch, drawing is in effect the basis of all visual arts. Often the drawing is absorbed by the completed work or destroyed in the course of completion. Thus, the usefulness of a ground plan drawing of a building that is to be erected decreases as the building goes up. Similarly, points and lines marked on a raw stone block represent auxiliary drawings for the sculpture that will be hewn out of the material. Essentially, every painting is built up of lines and pre-sketched in its main contours; only as the work proceeds is it consolidated into coloured surfaces. As shown by an increasing number of findings and investigations, drawings form the material basis of mural, panel, and book paintings. Such preliminary sketches may merely indicate the main contours or may predetermine the final execution down to exact details. They may also be mere probing sketches. Long before the appearance of actual small-scale drawing, this procedure was much used for monumental murals. With sinopia—the preliminary sketch found on a layer of its own on the wall underneath the fresco, or painting on freshly spread, moist plaster—one reaches the point at which a work that merely served as technical preparation becomes a formal drawing expressing an artistic intention.