A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures, using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, anatomically correct renderings to loose and expressive sketches. A life drawing is a drawing of the human figure, traditionally nude, from observation of a live model. Creating life drawings, or life studies, in a life class, has been a large element in the traditional training of artists in the Western world since the Renaissance.
Figure drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Figure drawing by Lovis Corinth. Before 1925
Nude study by Annibale Carracci
The drawing class, Michiel Sweerts, 1660
Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface. The instrument might be pencils, crayons, pens with inks, brushes with paints, or combinations of these, and in more modern times, computer styluses with graphics tablets.
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice
Madame Palmyre with Her Dog, 1897. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Galileo Galilei, Phases of the Moon, 1609 or 1610, brown ink and wash on paper. 208 × 142 mm. National Central Library (Florence), Gal. 48, fol. 28r
Antoine Watteau, trois crayons technique
