The Story of Drawing in 6 Images

Drawing is personal and revealing. If you think of the painting or sculpture as the public performance, then drawing is where you can encounter the artist at his or her most unguarded: trying things out and wondering whether this or that idea will work. Experimenting, looking, dreaming, planning. Catching ideas on the wing. When we look at the marks an artist has made, we get exhilaratingly close to what – and how – they saw.

In this article, author Susan Owens considers the roles of observation and imagination in drawing through 6 images from the book. The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art is available now.


When I was writing The Story of Drawing, I was constantly aware of twin poles at play: observation and imagination. If you take a single artist, like Leonardo da Vinci, you can witness him looking with such acuity that he is not just observing but actually discovering intricate forms – the valves of the heart, for example, or the movement of water – through the discipline of drawing them. But Leonardo also used drawing to delve into the darkest corners of his imagination, to explore the cataclysmic storms that haunted him.

Here are three pairs of drawings: two animals, two landscapes and two self-portraits. I chose them to give a sense of how a variety of artists, working in different times and in different places, have responded to the freedom offered by drawing, whether they were observing, imagining – or doing both at once.


Ostracon drawing of a cat and a mouse, c.1295-1075 BC; ink on limestone. Brooklyn Museum, New York  

When an artist has an idea for a funny cartoon, he or she reaches for drawing materials because they are quick to use – and not too precious. That was as true in ancient Egypt as it is today. Scribes and draughtsmen picked up the smooth flakes of limestone called ostraca that were a plentiful by-product of tomb construction and used them like sketchbooks: practising, doodling and drawing for their own amusement. One that survives is a comic scene, a quick sketch showing a cat waiting on a mouse, bringing him a fan to keep him cool and a fowl for his dinner. A scrap like this allows us to peep through the eyes of these ancient artists at a witty and unexpectedly informal visual world.

Eugène Delacroix, Crouching Tiger, 1839; pen, brush and iron-gall ink. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Drawing offers a vital way of plugging into the world. For the French Romantic artist Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) it was a near constant activity. He drew swiftly, with lines that were often unruly, explosive and emphatic. Their purpose was to capture the essence of the subject, in the heat of the moment, as it appeared either to his eye – or his mind’s eye. He loved visiting the zoo at the Jardin des Plants in Paris, where he would sit down by the cages of lions and tigers, panthers and jaguars to watch the animals, pitching the speed of his drawing hand against their lithe and unpredictable movements. For this drawing he took a brush loaded with deep black ink and with a few economical strokes captured the tiger’s coiled tension.


Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, c.1080; handscroll; ink and watercolour on silk. Metropolitan Museum, New York  

Guo Xi (c.1020-1090) lived in Henan Province during the Northern Song dynasty. He was alive to the powerful beauty of landscape art, and once wrote: ‘Without leaving your room, you may sit to your heart’s content among streams and valleys… Could this fail to quicken your interest and thoroughly capture your heart?’ Guo’s subtle and atmospheric approach to landscape can be seen here. He draws a river valley in hazy evening light, with three gnarled old trees and a pavilion on a hill. There are servants hurrying towards it with cushions, and two elderly men making their own slow way: this is a story of old friends meeting. Guo’s drawing describes an inner state of mind – wistful and nostalgic – every bit as much as the external world.

Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Castle, c.1785-8; black chalk and stumping with white chalk on blue paper faded to buff. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection  

Thomas Gainsborough loved drawing landscape scenes, but his portrait practice kept him busy in town. So, when relaxing in the evenings, he gathered his drawing materials and imagined them instead. He would assemble props with which to create model landscapes: he found that lumps of coal served as rocks, sand or clay could be formed into banks, and stems of broccoli, artfully arranged, made convincing groves of trees. If bushes or ponds were needed, moss and mirror-glass did very well. Once he was satisfied, he would take inspiration from the tabletop scene and draw a landscape with rich, dense strokes of black and white chalk, rubbing here and there when he wanted a smoky effect. Though of imaginary places, these drawings were shaped by the vast mental database of countryside scenes he had by heart.


Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait at the age of thirteen, 1484; silverpoint on prepared paper. Albertina, Vienna

One day in 1484, when Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was thirteen years old, he decided to draw a self-portrait. Rather than looking directly in the mirror and confronting himself full-face, he arranged two mirrors so as to study his appearance from an unfamiliar angle, as though to attain some objectivity. Taking a sheet of prepared paper and a metalpoint stylus, this precocious boy carefully drew the image that appeared in the glass, using long, graceful strokes for the soft waves of his hair and subtle dashes to model his face. His cheeks are still childishly rounded, and his eyes have widened with the strain of the exercise. He points with his right hand towards his reflection in a determined gesture, perhaps even a challenge – though whether directed towards himself or others it is impossible to say. Whichever it is, the drawing makes a definite statement. Here I am, it seems to say. I am now an artist.

Egon Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait, 1916, pencil and gouache; Albertina, Vienna

The drawings Egon Schiele (1890-1918) made of human figures were so raw and provocative that he was imprisoned for allowing young people access to his work; one drawing was even burnt in court. Schiele frequently used himself as a model, not sparing himself from the intense and unflinching scrutiny to which he subjected others. This nude self-portrait he made in 1916, two years before his death from the Spanish flu at the age of twenty-eight, retains the burning core of adolescent angst that had driven his work from the outset but combines it with a sophisticated use of line and colour. He drew with a virtuosic contour but mottled the flesh with stains of rash pink and bruise blue; bringing into being a new kind of human figure to suit the dangerous new century: damaged, isolated, quizzical and vulnerable.


The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art is available now. Purchase from Yale and get free postage (UK only), or find it in your local bookshop.

About the author

Dr Susan Owens is a writer, art historian and former V&A curator. Her previous books include The Art of DrawingSpirit of Place and Imagining England’s Past


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