This peer reviewed essay discusses the aesthetic value of delicacy in drawing, exploring what it might mean to consider a drawing as delicate. Delicacy is one of the poetic, aesthetic and psychological qualities closely allied with the history and practice of drawing. Despite these widespread associations, delicacy as an aesthetic and critical phenomenon in drawing remains largely underexplored. A range of aesthetic qualities associated with widely held beliefs about the act of drawing are outlined in trying to give form and definition to delicacy as an aesthetic category of drawing.