What is the difference between PAINTING and DRAWING?

Drawing is a thing, painting another. They are both art, but drawing is the basis of art. If you can't draw you can stop painting, because drawing is the first thing an artist has to learn. First you learn to drawn, then you learn the light and shade (chiaroscuro), then you learn the charcoal/sanguine tecnique and then you start with colours: pastles, watercolour, tempera (distemper), acrylic, oil....

Drawing is the use of line, rather than the action of paint, like the flow and texturing of paint, which is closer to the general meaning of “painting”. You do “draw” with the brush, anyway. It’s almost unavoidable. Have a look at any major artist, and you’ll see lines drawn by the brush, in almost any medium from oils onward. The use of the words has been blurred by techniques and too many wrong definitions. In Australia we had a court case recently over a major portrait competition, the Archibald Prize, because someone claimed it was a “drawing”, not a “portrait”. Point being, a portrait remains a portrait, regardless of whether it’s drawn or painted. Similarly, a line can be drawn by anything, but only painted by paint media.

Drawing uses pencils, pens, pastels, or charcol that is applied directly to the paper. Painting uses brushes or palette knives to apply paint (oil, watercolor, or acrylic) to a canvas.

I think drawing depends mostly on line. Shading can also be added to create a range of values. Painting uses brushes of varying width and oil paint thick or thin.There is much more to deal with in oil painting than drawing. Color, brushstrokes, tecnique can be more personal and varied. I like to draw, but my drawings are very different than my paintings.

Drawing is basically getting a pencil, pen, crayon or whatever medium you may have and doodling a picture of something. Painting meanwhile needs a more specific media--that is globs of colored liquid and usually a paint brush--in order for the artist to proceed. Painters usually use acrylic and oil paints. They have different mixtures of chemicals so they produce different textures and styles of art. Surely though, we can still draw with a paint brush and paint. ^_^