dessinées

Dessinées is the feminine plural form of the past participle of dessiner, and functions as an adjective in French. It denotes that something has been drawn by hand or produced by drawing rather than by photographic, mechanical, or digital means. The form agrees with feminine plural nouns, for example: images dessinées, illustrations dessinées, animations dessinées.

In usage, dessinées appears in art, publishing, and film contexts to emphasize manual drawing. In visual arts and illustration, catalog descriptions often distinguish “dessinées” works from “photographiques” or “numériques.” In publishing, plates or pages described as dessinées indicate hand-drawn illustrations rather than printed reproductions. In cinema and animation, expressions such as animations dessinées or film d’animation dessinée signal traditional, hand-drawn technique as opposed to computer-generated rendering.

Historically, hand-drawn techniques were central to animation and illustration through the 19th and 20th centuries. With the rise of digital imaging, the adjective remains in use to evoke artisanal or craft-oriented quality, especially in marketing, restoration notes, or scholarly descriptions.

Note that dessinées is not a standalone noun; the common noun for a drawing is normally dessin, while dessinées must accompany a feminine plural noun. In English, the corresponding sense is typically rendered as “hand-drawn” or “drawn.”