II Reading

Exercise 6. Read and translate the text A:

Text A Drawing

Madame Palmyre with Her Dog, 1897. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Drawing is a form of visual expression and is one of the major forms within the visual arts. There are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning and doodling. There are also many drawing methods, such as line drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania and tracing. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch.

Drawing makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Instruments used include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers, styluses and various metals. An artist who works in drawing may be called a draftsman or draughtsman.

The most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or almost anything. The medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas. The easy availability of basic drawing instruments makes drawing more universal than most other media.

Drawing is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper. Traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology drawing is distinct from painting. Dry media such as chalk may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a liquid medium, applied with brushes or pens. Similar supports likewise can serve both: painting generally involves the application of liquid paint onto prepared canvas or panels, but sometimes an underdrawing is drawn first on that same support. Drawing is often exploratory, with considerable emphasis on observation, problem-solving and composition. Drawing is regularly used in preparation for a painting.

Working on an image the artist wants to gain an understanding of how the various media will work. The different drawing implements can be tried on practice sheets in order to determine value and texture, and how to apply the implement in order to produce various effects.

The stroke of the drawing implement can be used to control the appearance of the image. Ink drawings typically use hatching, which consists of groups of parallel lines. Cross-hatching uses hatching in two or more different directions to create a darker tone. Broken hatching, or lines with intermittent breaks, is used to form lighter tones, and by controlling the density of the breaks a graduation of tone can be achieved. Stippling uses dots to produce tone, texture or shade.

Sketch drawings use similar techniques, although with pencils and drawing sticks continuous variations in tone can be achieved. Often the lines in a sketch are drawn to follow the contour of the subject being drawn, thus producing a depth effect.

In fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery and other things are often called "drawings" even when they have been transferred to another medium by printing.