The history of drawing

The first drawings originated around 32,000 years ago from early cavemen.  They would draw simple images (usually of animals) on the walls of caves, these images were very basic and made up of mostly shapes and there wasn't much use of colour either. Most of the images were made by engraving into the rock but some were painted on with clay. Later they started to paint on the walls, they only had access to the colours black red brown and yellow though. No-one knows why the cavemen started drawing, weather it was to leave messages or for religious purposes.

As time moved on drawings got more and more elaborate until the first written language was created in Egyptian times. It was basically just a load of symbols with meanings but it became the foundation for all written languages and had more 700 symbols. By Egyptian times the images were far more detailed and more colours were used, art was everywhere and most of it was religiously orientated, for example paintings were used to give people a pleasant afterlife and wall carvings and such were found all over temples.

In the 1400/1500's the Renaissance kicked off and drawing became more realistic as scholars looked for more emotion and realism in artwork. Lots of portraits of people were made in those years and there was now a wide variety of oil based paints, pencils, chalk and other drawing equipment.

At around the late 1800's more abstract work started to appear and while it was shunned at the time it soon became popular and is now the foundation of most modern art. Although before art was of a very high level abstract art inspired originality and challenged artists more as instead of just coping what they saw before them, they had to imagine.

Digital Art:

In the mid 1960's engineers and scientists started experimenting with computer programs to make art and in 1062  A. Michael Noll programmed a digital computer to generate visual patters just for artistic purposes. Soon drawing machines were made and digital art started to get it's own exhibitions and finally in 1987 adobe illustrator was made followed by adobe photoshop in 1990.

Anime/Animation

In art through the ages movement was implied in still images and many small contraptions like the magic lantern and the flip book were made to make the illusion of movement. When film was invented stop frame animation was discovered by accident. In the early 1900's frame by frame animation of cartoons were invented and called cell animations, over time they developed and in the late 1910's Japan started to make short animations. over time they developed a distinct style that has many different sub genre's and even more differer styles. 

Info from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/C/cave.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_ancient_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime