The draw is the master key and the strong base of academic training of João Abel Manta. Influenced by modernism, in a remnant of the second generation who have mastered the art in Portugal and enriched by the Renaissance/Humanist spirit of his cultural education, the result is the most varied, never fall into the banal. In a project completely free of "ticks", addictions, or stylistic moorings, each work is a creation that appears in the continuity of his general work, architectural and pictorial, rather than simply the evolution of a graphic line. In 1961, reached the Drawing Prize at the II Fine Arts Exhibition of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He is also a reference in the Portuguese cartoon, and in many other areas related to visual arts, particularly in painting.