Recently I was looking at Renaissance drawings with a Chinese friend. The works we were looking at were vast and made with a complex mix of coloured media. She explained that it’s hard to describe drawings like this in Chinese because there is just one word for “drawing”, which simply suggests a flowing sketch. China’s art has always been based on this kind of free drawing, while European art has a long history of being tightly disciplined and studious. Today, as this year’s Jerwood drawing prize shows, the west has caught up with China: this drawing is so open, free and unpredictable it can be almost anything – from the…