Sketch

The frame shows its own working. Construction lines, hatching and the parts the pencil has not reached yet, all sitting over the photograph they are describing.

Unfinished is the content. A completed drawing is a different object with a different feeling, and this look depends on being caught partway.

Graphite builds tone through hatching, which is parallel strokes laid at an angle, crossed a second time where the tone has to go darker. It never fills flat like paint.

Construction lines are the light marks an artist puts down to place things before committing. Ovals for a head, an axis through a figure, a horizon that runs past the edge of the object it belongs to.

One part of the frame stays photographic. The drawing occupies the other, and the join between them is where the eye goes first, so it is worth deciding which half gets which.

Use it on a title, an opening, or a shot about somebody making something. It reads as a process rather than a result.

Skip it when the scene carries colour information. Graphite is grey, and asking for a coloured pencil drawing is a different look with different rules.

Canvas is finished paint across the whole frame, in colour, with a woven texture under it. Sketch is grey graphite over part of the frame, deliberately incomplete.

The check is whether the marks build tone by crossing each other. Hatching means graphite. A filled area with brush direction in it means paint.

The model tidies up and returns a finished drawing, because finished is what a drawing usually means. Ask for construction lines to stay visible and name the half that is still photographic.

The other failure is a uniform grey wash across everything. Say the shading is hatching, so the tone is built from strokes rather than from an even fill.