Drawing is a means of creating an image using any of a variety of tools and techniques. It usually involves marking a surface by applying pressure from a tool or moving the tool across the surface using a dry medium such as graphite pencils, pen and ink, ink brushes, wax colored pencils, crayons, charcoal, pastels, and markers. Digital tools are also used to simulate their effects. The main methods used in drawing are line drawing, hatching, cross-hatching, random hatching, sketching, hatching, and blending. An artist who is highlighted by a drawing is called a draftsman or draughtsman.

Drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to paleolithic cave animal representations such as Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting humans, were used as models for painting or sculpture. The drawings on Greek vases, originally geometric, later evolved to human form with black pottery in the 7th century B.C.

When paper began to spread in Europe in the 15th century, drawings were adopted by such masters as Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who sometimes treated drawing as art in its own right rather than as a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture.