Drawing is a means of building an image, using any of a extensive variety of tools and technique. It generally involve making marks on a facade by apply pressure from a instrument, or moving a device across a surface.

Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, polish color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and marker. Digital tools which reproduce the effects of these are also used. The main technique used in drawing are: line sketching, hatching, crosshatching, unsystematic hatching, scribble, stippling, and merger.

Drawing is generally measured distinct from painting, in which colored pigments are suspended in a liquid medium and usually practical with a brush. Etching is comparable to drawing but differs in that the tool digs into the surface, which is then used to make prints on a divide surface.

One standard for differentiate drawing from painting is that it do not permit the artist to mix colors earlier than applying them; colors can only be blended on the drawing surface, usually by overlaying one upon the other or by put them close enough together that the eye "mixes" them.

These distinction are somewhat random and subject to change; some artists refer to fully-rendered pastel and colored-pencil composition as "paintings", and in nineteenth century usage "drawing" also encompassed the use of watercolors. In digital media, "drawing" often refers to the use of vector-based graphics programs, as distinguished as of bitmap-based "painting" software, except this distinction is not universal.