If over the past few decades drawings and prints have largely parted ways in the market, with auction sales and galleries devoted mainly to one or the other, drawings have largely retained their traditional relationship to sculpture and painting. The New York drawings auctions have always coincided with most of the Old Master paintings auctions, and it is not unusual for paintings collectors and drawings collectors to look at both. In recent years Sotheby’s has also incorporated a substantial sculpture section within its January Old Master paintings sale.

It is a trend also represented by dealers such as Trinity Fine Art Ltd. of London, whose Drawings Week material reflects the range of its holdings: In addition to a beautiful Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione drawing of Noah guiding the animals into the ark, the gallery is showing a selection of paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot from a distinguished collection, as well as an extraordinary group of Renaissance sculptures, including four recently discovered Doccia porcelain figures after Girolamo Ticciati, a Soldani Benzi terracotta relief, a Gianfrancesco Susini bronze crucifix, and, not least, a terracotta head by Giambologna. And, for the first time, C.G. Boerner will host a sculpture dealer, Bernhard Decker of Frankfurt am Main, who will present medieval northern European sculpture and paintings alongside Boerner’s Old Master works on paper, among them a drawing in pen and ink with wash from the Holbein workshop dated 1548 and showing Christ in the house of the Pharisee Simon.

If the importance of looking at as much as you can over the course of the week to get a broad sense of the market cannot be overstressed, there is inevitably far too much material to comment on here. Just a sampling, then: Among von Baeyer’s offerings is a group of French 18th-century drawings, including a large landscape in gouache and watercolor by Louis-Nicolas van Blarenberghe and his son, Henri-Joseph, showing "A Village Scene" (1776), a sheet once owned by Baron Meyer de Rothschild; and a drawing in brush and ink by Jean-Baptiste Greuze of "Alexander Before Diogenes" (1767–69). Hill-Stone will participate in Drawings Week from its stand at the Winter Antiques Fair at the Park Avenue Armory. Do not miss its French and Italian drawings of the 16th to the 19th centuries, including a pen-and-wash drawing by Gilles-Marie Oppenord of Charon ferrying souls across the River Styx (c. 1723–34), a late 18th-century stage design in pen and colored washes by Pietro Gonzaga and a watercolor showing a "Head of a Young Breton Woman" (c. 1904) by the Swiss artist Carl Moser. Gordon, in addition to the 16th-century Italian material for which she is best known (this time including a preparatory sketch by Bernardo Strozzi in oil on paper for an Allegory of Charity and a study in red chalk by Cavalier d’Arpino for his fresco in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome), will also show two works on paper from the 1970s by the Italian artists Giuseppe Penone (an untitled charcoal drawing) and Conrad Marca-Relli (a mixed-media collage). Among Marianne Elrick-Manley’s classic modern drawings is an unusual collage by the avant-garde artist and poet Mina Loy called "Communal Cot" (1949–50), a work that appeared in a 1959 exhibition of her "Constructions" organized by Marcel Duchamp at the Bodley Gallery in New York, depicting the homeless of the Bowery.

The dealers I spoke to point out that building a serious collection in the current market not only requires extensive browsing, of course, but also an effective strategy. A first step, one familiar to many of the biggest drawings collectors, is to find a dealer you trust, one who shares your tastes and understands your budget and your aims. However, says Kunz, it’s inevitable that "more seasoned collectors soon start to go out by themselves. There is a limited supply of material, after all. And if the dealer is open and collegial he or she will introduce you to other dealers. You will gradually gain access to what might appear to the newcomer as a rarefied world." He also stresses the importance of seeking the advice of knowledgeable museum curators in the field as a necessary antidote to the more or less market-driven concerns of the dealer.

Ongpin tells new collectors at events like Drawings Week "to find a dealer you like as a person and whose taste you share." But, he also insists, it’s not about an exclusive arrangement. "I encourage people to go to the auctions, see what they like, and then go to the dealer and discuss it with them. Auctions can be off-putting for a beginning collector. Dealers should be as helpful as possible in providing context for the material people are interested in." It’s an approach that certainly requires a dealer to take the long view: "Sometimes a collector buys a drawing from a competitor but you’ve introduced them to the field and made them feel comfortable," Ongpin says.

The message dealers want to communicate, it seems, is that they genuinely want to change people’s experience of this traditionally rather stuffy field for the better. And drawings events like those in London and New York are key to that effort. "The collegiality of these master drawings weeks is very important," says Ongpin. "And anyone who walks into my gallery and is interested in drawings is someone I want to spend time with. We’re a pretty friendly bunch on the whole."

Catherine Bindman is an art critic specializing in prints and drawings and an editor of museum catalogues. She was formerly deputy editor at Art on Paper magazine.