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The Natural Way to Draw

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Great for the beginner and the expert, this book offers readers exercises to improve their work.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

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23650 people want to read

About the author

Kimon Nicolaïdes

5 books33 followers
Kimon Nicolaїdes was an American artist, educator, and author. During World War I, he served in the United States Army in France as a camouflage artist. He taught at the Art Students League of New York after the war. Nicolaїdes' book The Natural Way to Draw (1941) provided a new method of teaching drawing, and was widely used.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 172 reviews
Profile Image for Sandy.
19 reviews17 followers
August 21, 2012
In light of recent reviews, I feel compelled to advocate it. I've taught university life drawing for over 16 years. If you follow the exercises and do as many as required, your drawings WILL improve immensely. While I agree it is in complete opposition to hard edged, refined type drawings--it is so only as a means. When you skip Nicolaides' experiential cohesive gestures, mass drawings and cross contours and straight through to exacting control, your drawings will remain stiff, disconnected and they won't sit naturally in space (a figure is in perspective--just like a house). It's easy to go from loose to tight drawing but very hard to go from tight to loose (yet accurate) because it requires more discipline, focus, quick, accurate observation and excellent hand eye control. These exercises hone those skills.
Profile Image for Michelle.
162 reviews3 followers
June 27, 2014
I have been drawing since I can remember, and I have been seriously studying art for the last five plus years. I have spent a lot of time focused on the crisp, controlled line and form, carefully trying to copy without seeing. I avoided books like this like the plague because I could never "wrap my brain around that abstract thinking gobbledygook."

But recently, I realized that I wasn't progressing. My drawings were lacking something important. That was when I was ready to break away from stereotypes and explore this book. I read through the whole thing first and foremost and he explained exactly what I wanted in my drawings--I knew it, but never knew how to get it. Technical knowledge is great, but without the emotion of the human heart, drawings become stiff, mechanical and lifeless. I wanted *life* in my drawings.

After reading the whole book, I went back and started doing the exercises. Sometimes, they were hard to understand . I hate mysticism-type talk. That whole "feel and don't think." So it wasn't easy. However, I figured out that it isn't exactly mysticism. Really, everything is made of a gesture--if you think about the atoms and energy that naturally flow from all objects, it makes perfect sense. Even an inanimate object is full of energy as the atoms race around.

This book is not the be-all end-all to learning to draw, but it is an important part of drawing. If you couple this with more atelier style lessons, your art will definitely improve and faster than you thought. Balance in everything.
10 reviews
September 9, 2011
I normally do not review art books, as there are others who do better than that beside me, but in this book, Nicolaides is the exact archetype of the nonsensical art educator: Teaching you to draw without any basis of actual observation.
To give you a good idea, Nicolaides asks you to do three main types of exercises, which become harder with time, they are: Gesture, Blind Contour, And his "Mass exercises"; Problem is: First of all, Gesture drawing is intended for artists to use to relieve the stiffness in their drawings and to capture life in the figure, Problem for Nicolaides: THESE ARTISTS MUST FIRST KNOW HOW TO CONSTRUCT THE FIGURE AND/OR OBSERVE IT. As for Blind Contours, I have never met a respected art educator who'd recommended them; His mass-excercises show no conception at all of "Mass"; He does not even understand what Mass is, Turn to page 77 if you have the book, and you might possible see the worst "Mass" drawing ever done.
Drawing, on the other hand, should be based on actual understanding of form, observation and actual drawing. If you keep making scribbles for 360 hours [The time Nicolaides allocates] You will end up creating scribbles.
The one thing this book can teach you is to always meet deadlines, and even then, meh.
Profile Image for Sandy.
35 reviews6 followers
September 22, 2011
This is the best book on drawing that I own or have read. It teaches one to see. The blind contour drawing method was surprisingly helpful. If you check out one drawing book this year, this should be the one.

The instruction is beautifully written and the student drawings included are helpful and inspiring. People complain about the time suggestions ranging from 2 minutes to 8 hours. But really, do you think you are going to be the best you can be without spending the time?
Profile Image for Manybooks.
3,730 reviews102 followers
May 12, 2022
I have wondered for a long time how many people have been seriously frustrated and annoyed regarding life drawing (the artistic rendering of female and male nudes on mostly paper either during classes or in studio sessions without an instructor). I do know I have been, and that indeed, until my fiancé (who is an artist) suggested I try Kimon Nicolaides' first published in 1941 The Natural Way to Draw, I had certainly become so massively disillusioned with the life drawing courses I had tried over the years and with the many pretty much useless instruction books languishing and gathering dust on my bookshelves I was definitely more than ready to give up and throw in the proverbial towel.

And yes, this is most definitely something that Kimon Nicolaides and his The Natural Way to Draw have totally changed for me, with both Nicolaides' positive and encouraging tone of instructing voice in The Natural Way to Draw and even more so his many featured exercises (and for me, in particular the ones concerning gesture and contour drawing) bringing back not only my drawing and artistic interest and joy but also letting me realise that Kimon Nicolaides' The Natural Way to Draw amazingly and absolutely lives up to its title and shows interested readers how to draw and render nude models naturally and never in a pedantic and stiffly dictatorial manner, making The Natural Way to Draw not only delighful and engagingly fun but also turning Kimon Nicolaides into a perfect and wonderfully laid back instructor and mentor for budding life drawers. So if you follow Kimon Nicolaides’ ' featured and suggested exercises and do as many of them as required (and maybe at times even beyond what Nicolaides asks of you in The Natural Way to Draw), in my humble and gained from personal drawing experience opinion, your life drawings, and your skill levels, yes, they should and likely will improve immensely and lastingly, instilling confidence and rendering your drawings of the female and of the male nude and the techniques for them ever increasingly competent, but also and happily loose, imaginative and never once in any manner rigid or anally retentive, a drawing outcome that should definitely be striven for, as a loose and confident, as a natural and non artificial drawing style is for me and in my humble opinion something first and foremost, is totally essential and required.

Therefore, five solid stars for Kimon Nicolaides’ The Natural Way to Draw, although I do have one minor little annoyance and namely that in my humble opinion, there should also be spiral bound editions of The Natural Way to Draw available, since it sure would be much more user friendly, could I make easy practical use of The Natural Way to Draw whilst at the same time drawing or painting nude models (and not have my book constantly be in danger of snapping close). However and sadly, I do not think that spiral bound copies of The Natural Way to Draw even exist, a rather annoying oversight which I do hope is meant to be remedied in the not so far future.
Profile Image for Ruth.
Author 11 books572 followers
December 7, 2007
Simply the bible for life drawing.

R
Profile Image for surfurbian.
124 reviews4 followers
April 23, 2015
This text was used as a loose framework for my college level drawing course. I say loose because we did use many of the exercises but we did not follow the exact progression, time requirements, or employ every exercise.

I found it an extremely effective method to teach observation and drawing. I have had the chance to be a part of other courses taught using other methods and find this one superior. I am now reading this text again after 30 years since my first reading. In light of my education and over 40 years of drawing experience, my opinion remains the same. I would add that the exercises outlined therein still hold value for the most seasoned visual artist and are the equivalent of scales for the musician.
Profile Image for Terri Lynn.
997 reviews
May 14, 2014
I read this book back in 1978 and reread it over and over. Kimon Nicolaides was a fantastic teacher of art who believed that the way to learn to draw was to learn to observe details and then practice drawing constantly. He put it like this- "There is only one right way to draw and that is a perfectly natural way. It has nothing to do with artifice or technique. It has nothing to do with aesthetics or conception. It has only to do with the act of correct observation and by that I mean a physical contact with all sorts of objects through all the senses." There-now the secret is out! This book was written in 1941 and still shines brilliantly upon those who care to learn to draw. Nicolaides' work is brilliant. If you want to learn to draw, start right here with this book.
Profile Image for M0rningstar.
136 reviews5 followers
December 19, 2014
The written parts of this books are long-winded and only marginally useful. The example images are poorly reproduced and fail to illuminate the textual content. This book's biggest selling point is the pedantic "working plans", which basically consist of "Monday: do gestures for eight hours; Tuesday: do gestures for eight hours; Wednesday: draw cubes for eight hours..." (you get the idea.)

One can achieve the same effect (or better) and save some money by just committing solidly to drawing for a certain number of hours each day/week, and picking up one of the more useful books or videos (anything Vilppu is full of awesome; Betty Edwards is OK too.)
Profile Image for Rob Dhillon.
108 reviews48 followers
June 11, 2015
I learned how to see ... to really see. This book helped in all sorts of ways to do quality surgery with excellent results.
Profile Image for Clay Olmstead.
212 reviews7 followers
August 11, 2015
Possibly the best book ever written on learning to draw. It's simple: here is an exercise that will get you started; now draw for three hours, then come back for another exercise. When you're done, you have a firm foundation to go figure out how you want to draw. If that method of learning doesn't excite you, then you might want to learn knitting or something else instead.
Profile Image for Ellen.
2 reviews2 followers
March 18, 2013
I have bought this book twice. I can't remember where or why I first bought it but the second time was when I was teaching art. It is unlike any other book about drawing. When I let myself go and follow the instructions it's just plain fun and the result is great art.
Profile Image for Erin Panjer.
75 reviews3 followers
July 29, 2011
This book details how to go about thinking, understanding the world as an artist. Along with useful exercises, there is a wondrous amount of good advice, I see this book as a necessary stepping stone in the road of expression.
Profile Image for Murray.
Author 151 books736 followers
January 20, 2023
My brother is the artist of pencil, charcoal, acrylics and oils, but you learn a lot about human creativity even if you are a writer and reader like me.
Profile Image for Hon Lady Selene.
563 reviews78 followers
July 1, 2024
Everything would have been great but I quote from the very incipit, from the section called "How to use this book" where Kimon says:

"Begin your first day's work by reading the first section until you come to the direction that you are to draw for three hours based on Schedule 1A then STOP AND DRAW."

OK.

But the instruction doesn't exist.

I see Schedule 1A quite soon after this sentence, there are a couple of explanatory pages regarding the task but.... there is no direction to begin drawing. The text simply continues with the second subchapter and task - so I'm not entirely sure when am I to do the actual stopping of the reading and the actual drawing.

Instructions unclear, ended up having a breakdown.

As it is, in the HowToUse section, Kimon explains that he structured this so it would be helpful to people who don't have a proper Art education, but this is very much not the case: he talks a lot about blind contours (which is drawing without looking at the paper), this isn't something to throw at a student and not expect disaster simply because people who are trying to learn to draw are not interested in pretending that scribbles are art.

These types of wild pseudo-educational notions remind me of my very-much-still-in-her-heart-communist History teacher from highschool who had a fetish with making us stand with our backs to an old, mouldy map and point at Constantinople without peeking at it.
Profile Image for Alex.
237 reviews3 followers
August 28, 2011
There are a dizzying number of methods for drawing practice in this book, which make the author seem awsome and his book very influencial.

However, I wonder whether so many methods are really so "natural", and moreover, whether they are really necessary to learn drawing. Some students may want to perfect in, say, proportion, form modeling, or edge, etc., each of which usually takes a long time; by busily shifting from methods to methods, however, they may not have enough time and concentration for such perfection.
Profile Image for Jacob Russell.
78 reviews15 followers
February 6, 2015
Not a stand alone book, but the essential compliment to books with a more traditional approach to figure drawing, with their concentration on anatomy, proportions, representation. I can't think of a better way to find one's way to a more personal drawing style, to escape the many imitative traps of representational methods.

With Rush, Peck and Robert Beverly Hale, Nicolaides makes my figure drawing library complete.
Profile Image for Heather.
24 reviews2 followers
April 29, 2013
I have had this book for years. I really is the best book you could use to learn to draw life. Despite being out of life drawing classes, I continue to turn to this book. It's a great resource to reference, it's not a sit-down read.
Profile Image for Erika Mulvenna.
531 reviews26 followers
November 30, 2007
Nice pictues of how other artists have approached the human form. The author also includes many drawing excercises along with examples of student drawings.
Profile Image for Andrew Klem.
48 reviews7 followers
September 2, 2016
This is the best book on drawing that has ever been written, and it's the only one I still own. Every time I see a copy at a used bookstore, I buy it and give it to a friend.
Profile Image for MarilynLovesNature.
239 reviews61 followers
April 26, 2023
I read this many years ago and found it very helpful when teaching drawing. The different methods explained are good practices to improve drawing skills.
Profile Image for Nero Grimes.
23 reviews1 follower
May 31, 2015
Brilliant, but not for beginners.


"Drawing depends on seeing. Seeing depends on knowing. Knowing comes form a constant effort to encompass reality with all of your senses, all that is you. You are never to be concerned with appearances to an extent which prevents reality of content. It is necessary to rid yourself of the tyranny of the object as it appears. The quality of absoluteness, the note of authority, that the artist depends upon a more complete understanding than the eyes alone can give. to what the eye can see the artist adds feeling and thought. He can if he wishes, relate for us the adventures of his soul in the midst of life." -Kimon Nicolaides
Profile Image for Terrance Robinson.
1 review
November 7, 2014
I have read The Natural Way to Draw; it was a solid read for beginners as well as professionals that wise to review and use instructions of how to perfect various drawing techniques and skills. It is mostly black and white illustrations with straightforward explanations and procedures; the textbook is frequently used by many colleges and universities teaching drawing courses such as Beginning Drawing to Advance Life Drawing.
Profile Image for GONE HU I-Mael.
40 reviews
June 10, 2022
In light of recent reviews, I feel compelled to advocate it. I've taught university life drawing for over 16 years. If you follow the exercises and do as many as required, your drawings WILL improve immensely. While I agree it is in complete opposition to hard edged, refined type drawings--it is so only as a means.
Profile Image for Marta Teixeira.
36 reviews5 followers
September 14, 2021
Best drawing book I have read!
It's a manual of exercices that help you improve your skills in a very comprehensive way.
It's has examples and schedules although the schedule is really though.
Profile Image for George Begashvili.
5 reviews
March 2, 2023
The Natural Way to Draw" is a classic instructional drawing book written by Kimon Nicolaides, first published in 1941. It aims to teach students the fundamentals of drawing by encouraging them to observe the world around them and develop their own style through practice and repetition.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part covers "Contour Drawing," which emphasizes the importance of hand-eye coordination and developing a sense of touch. The second part covers "Gesture Drawing," which focuses on capturing the energy and movement of a subject through quick, fluid strokes. The third and final part covers "Mass Drawing," which explores the use of light and shadow to create depth and form.

One of the strengths of "The Natural Way to Draw" is its emphasis on practice and repetition. Nicolaides encourages students to draw every day, to experiment with different materials and techniques, and to be patient with their progress. The book also provides numerous exercises and prompts to help students develop their skills and overcome creative blocks.

Another strength of the book is its focus on observation. Nicolaides emphasizes the importance of looking closely at the world around us and seeing things in a new way. He encourages students to draw from life, rather than relying on photographs or other images, and to experiment with different perspectives and angles.

While "The Natural Way to Draw" has been praised for its effectiveness in teaching drawing skills, some readers may find its approach too rigid or demanding. The book requires a significant time commitment and dedication to daily practice, which may not be feasible for everyone. Additionally, some readers may find the book's emphasis on developing a personal style through repetition and observation to be limiting or outdated.

Overall, "The Natural Way to Draw" is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning to draw. Its emphasis on practice, observation, and experimentation provides a solid foundation for developing drawing skills, and its timeless advice continues to inspire artists today.
Profile Image for Andrea Kantrowitz.
Author 3 books5 followers
November 30, 2022
His book, based on his teaching in the 1920s and 30’s at the Art Students’ League in New York City, was really important to me in high school when I was learning how to draw. Much of what I found in subsequent books on the topic, for example Betty Edwards’ Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain, comes straight from Nicolaides. A lot of people who teach drawing today maybe don't even realise how much of what they teach really comes from Nicolaides - he was so prescient in so many ways. One of the main messages of his book is that you have to feel what the model is doing. Drawing involves more than looking at the model in some sort of clinical way. In order to make a drawing that really communicates the action of the person that you're drawing from life, for example, you have to feel that action in your own body.

That idea of sensing action is prescient on so many levels. It touches on later developmental psychology and the way that motor action either precedes or facilitates cognitive development, that whole understanding of cognition as embodied, that our thinking is active in the sense that it involves our whole body's interaction with the world. Nicolaides really understood that on a fundamental level, using it as his starting point in teaching drawing. When we watch an action closely, we're simulating that action in our minds. His drawing method built on that understanding on a phenomenological level, even if he didn't know the neuroscience. What's intriguing is that the neuroscience has vindicated his view.

798 reviews123 followers
December 5, 2017
"The awareness of unity must be first and must be continuous."

The book is (or perhaps was) one of the first books to be recommended to serious art students who were studying on their own. I can’t remember where it was recommended to me, some art forum I suspect. I was going to follow it word for word, but I quickly got impatient and instead was given an overview into creative process by a purist. You can scoff, but I think Nikolaïdes’s words are worth reading.

Each exercise directed it’s student to follow a set course, drawing for 3 hours and sometimes for 20 minutes several times a day, which I flagrantly disregarded. However, I liked the way he wrote about drawing and being an artist, and I found myself underlining words that lent themselves very well to the writing process as well.

Section one wanted us to put ourselves in the models shoes and observe life as it is. Look at life, not the paper!

Sometimes we get so caught up in craft and study that we forget that all of us, from non-fiction to fantasy, are seeking a kernel of truth to carry our conceit beyond the paper and into our reader’s hearts.

I wonder if anyone would make a video or essay based on this book… I’ll put it on my to-do list.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 172 reviews

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