Why Do Artists Make Drawings?

Drawing by Megan Coyle
Drawing by Megan Coyle

Artists make drawings as a way to express themselves creatively. Drawing can also be used as a way to plan future works of art or work through creative ideas. Overall, drawing is one of the many creative outlets artists can use.

Here’s an overview of why artists draw:

1. Creative expression

There are many different materials or mediums that artists can use to make artwork to express their ideas. Drawing is a technique that artists can use for some of those mediums, such as charcoal, color pencils, graphite, etc.

2. Get familiar/better with the medium

If an artist enjoys drawing or wants to improve drawing with a different medium, making more drawings can help with this. After all, practice helps you improve with any craft, and drawing is no exception to this rule.

3. Brainstorm ideas

Drawings are a way that artists can sketch out ideas for future works of art. They serve as a wonderful way to explore ideas and get a sense of what compositions may work for different mediums or scales.

4. Plan future works of art

Sketches/drawings also work really well when artists want to plan out future works of art. By planning out how to approach a composition through drawing, the artist can save time for when they approach the materials they’re using for the actual work of art and help them avoid running into as many errors (which can be costly depending on the materials used) as they’d run into otherwise.

Indian Ink Drawing of Blocks from College

Indian Ink Drawing by Megan Coyle

I was an art major in college, and part of our curriculum was to take a couple of studio drawing classes. This Indian ink drawing was a piece I completed for one of those courses.

Back in college, still life always seemed to be a bowl of the same plastic fruit that had been in the art department for years. Occasionally other objects were thrown in, although usually I was pretty bored with the subjects we tackled. For this piece, I thought it was pretty unique that we drew from a block arrangement. Using Indian ink made the composition even more interesting, since we had to focus closely on the variations in contrast for the highlights and shadows.