Accessing the drawing context is the essential first step before you can create any graphics or animations on a canvas. When you use JavaScript to select a canvas element, you are simply referencing the HTML element itself. However, the canvas on its own does not provide any drawing capabilities. To actually draw, you need to obtain a drawing context from the canvas. The context is an object that provides all the methods and properties for drawing shapes, lines, text, and images. When you call the getContext('2d') method on your canvas element, you receive a 2D rendering context. This context is what you use for all your drawing operations. Every time you want to create a new line, fill a rectangle, or render text, you will call a method on this context object. Without first obtaining the context, none of the drawing commands will work, and your canvas will remain blank.