The focus of this paper is on exploring the delicate position that drawing can inhabit, between absence and presence. The paper unpicks the value of delicacy to uncover a web of tensions between the seen- unseen, touching-not-touching and crucially, absence and presence. This ‘delicacy’ in drawing is then critically repositioned through the lens of recent writing from the field of feminist science studies to explore the possibility of a new critical position vis-a-vis discourse of presence in drawing. The significance for us is that through looking at drawing we become sensitised to the possibility of other states of being, which in turn may offer fresh lenses though which to see the world. Equally, in co-opting new forms of critical discourse from other fields of thought might we enrich our understanding of graphic encounters?