A Working Plan for Art Study - The Natural Way to Draw

Bought this one at the insistence of my son because he feels that he has learned a lot from it. Haven't started working with it quite yet but was looking at it when he was here and can see that it will be a great learning tool.

This is an excellent book for disciplinate yourself, if you really want to learn. It has a 3hour daily schedule of drawing that will teach you to let out your best and begin creating your style in drawing. Simple and accurate explanation, though I would like more examples of Nicolaides excercises or sketches, or even his students along with the great masters examples. But definetley a great adquisition!

This is a planned study workbook. The technique taught in this book has value, with results that I'm satisfied with. I am spending significantly less time on some lessons than the author recommends. I think everyone would have to do that these days.
I personally would have liked to see more examples of the author's finished art in this volume.
CH

This book consists of timeless advice and very well laid out lesson plans. The author must have undoubtedly been a very helpful teacher in his day. Too many books dwell on techniques without providing a practical way to enhance skills associated with those techniques. This book forces you to follow a regimented lesson-plan that gradually shows you the techniques as well as forcing you to do plenty of practice so you can cement what you have already learned. if you go to art class, this is a great supplement.

A selling artist suggested I have this book. It's best for figure drawing and begins with the basic scribbling, which you are ordered to do for two hours a day for a week. Then you are permitted to go to the next step. If I could have stuck with it, I would, as well, probably be selling my work. But alas, it wasn't for me.

If anyone is beginning their art program with foundation drawing this particular book is outstanding. It covers all aspects, beginning with gesture drawing,contour and cross contours. The human body is covered later on in the book.

Came packaged so tightly that dust cover, already torn some, was almost cracked off. Old dusty and repleat with book dandruff. Contents seem to be a rather intriguing set of exercises, the most promising of which are the gestural line drawings.

Anyone preparing to undertake this book should be aware it is tremendously demanding of your time and energies. There is a minimum expectation that you will draw for three hours a day for a one year period. I have never completed the whole course but undertook it several times and managed make it through three or four months of the program with some success. This book was held in tremendous esteem by a lot of students who swore by it when I attended Cal Arts. This is in part because Cal Arts is an animation school. A lead animator needs to capture weight and gesture in a very quickly done drawing. The book teaches you to actually feel as if you are touching the object with your pencil and feel its weight and volume by means of various excercises.
Later in my drawing career I found a school that taught foundational classic illustration techniques that have been passed down for ages. We were taught life drawing techniques using the four basic tones, proportions, light and form shadow, line quality quick sketch etc. One day my teacher who is an esteemed fine artist who has also created many well known movie posters you would recognize, noticed one of the students had a copy of "The Natural Way to Draw" on her drawing bench. He picked it up and asked all the students to take a look at the book. He opened it up high and actually began mocking it. My mouth was wide open as I assumed that this book was unquestioned in the art world. As he made his way through the book showing samples of the illustrations especially in the advanced stages, many in the class were laughing out loud at the pictures. I must admit at that moment they suddenly looked rather poor to me as well. I asked him isn't there anything in this book's teaching methods you feel is worthwhile? So many people follow it. His answer was a very flat and absolute "No." I was shocked. He asked me a question that I felt is worthy of consideration for anyone considering undertaking this book. He said "Look at these pictures." Would you like to be drawing like this after a year, or as you are drawing now after only a few months. As I looked at the book and examined my illustrations and those of the other students in the room, the illustrations in Nicolades book looked like primitive scribbles. To be sure the gestures and longer drawings had weight form and action, but so did the students work we were doing to an even greater degree, plus our work was capturing the personality and likeness of the model. In my case I much prefered the look of the drawings I was able to do using classical techniques. I had moved much closer to my personal goals in a much shorter amount of time.
Now I don't tell this anecdote to disparage Nicolades, because many people have truly become the artist they always wanted to be through this book. Flip through the book and ask yourself, after all the work you will go through, do the examples in the book represent the way you would like to be able to draw. Know that you when you are through you will not be drawing like a Norman Rockwell or in a classical, comic or animation style if that is your desire. These methods will not translate as these styles require different disciplines. Do you want to be an artist where your work will be looked at as an internal expression? Do you put a priority on how your work expresses an esoteric truth over a literal one? If the answer is yes then by all means go for this book. If you desire to draw illustrations that capture accurate or sleek stylized likenesses and express yourself with subtle light and shadow or beautiful linework you may find yourself happier with a book or class that teaches with more classical methods. To put it more simply, when people think of you as an artist, do you want them to think of you wearing a french beret at an easel or a baseball cap at a drawing table? You can learn greatly from this book. This book offers you a long arduous trip. Do make sure it is taking you to the destination you desire. If you are not sure, or you aspire to be an animation clean-up or in-between artist then perhaps should look into the easier Betty Edwards, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain series." She borrows exercises directly from this book and it might be a good guage to see if this method suits your personality.

First, I apologyze for my bad English because I`m from Brazil. This guy was born to be a philosopher not an artist. This book does not add anything to those who have read Sketch Book for the Artist (Sarah Simblet) or The Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing (Mick Maslen and Jack Southern) or Expressive Drawing: A Practical Guide to Freeing the Artist ( Steven Aimone) among others. On the contrary, these books I have quoted only make the philosophical ramblings of Mr. Nicolaides become less useful. Well, this is my opinion.

Having been taught the Nicolaides method at the University of Nevada (sequence of four semesters) and having read the reviews so far, I want to let everyone know that the method does not teach you to draw like the examples in the book; the examples reveal the intense training the brain goes through when subjected to the exercises and from those exercises your skills enhance a thousand fold to enable to you illustrate the world inside imagination or out here in the material realm in any technique you wish, from abstract to absolute realism.

Those exercises built my understanding of how to draw like no other. Any instructor who says the student would end up drawing like the exercise examples knows nothing about the method, was never subjected to the exercises from someone who had been taught the method. As with any book, this method was put together by students of Nicolaides; he did not believe they could be taught through a book but only through the actual experience of drawing; he died before the collaboration of instructor and students was finished.

As a long time art instructor I have implemented the exercises in my drawing classes, enhancing the drawing capabilities of my students and I can firmly state that no student completed fine drawings (in the medium of their choice)that looked like the exercise drawings. Anyone able to devote the hours to these exercises will find themselves a totally different artist than the one taught only to copy what they see, and this method understates the difference between fine art and art as craft.

I have bought this book 3 times! I was persuaded by good reviews but grew impatient with the lengthy schedules and my progress (so I gave away my copies). I tried other books which use faster and more direct approaches to teaching art. However, I found myself freezing over the exercises afraid of making mistakes. I wasn't sure how long the practices should be to make progress, and I found the subject matters completely uninspiring. For the 3rd time, I returned to Nicolaides' book and promised myself to stick to the schedule and to make more of a concerted effort. Now I'm making far more progress than ever before with any book.

Compared to the amount of time spent working on the exercises, the amount of time needed to do the reading is minute, especially compared to every other art book I've tried. Yet, I actually have started to feel like even more time could be devoted to the exercises. Personally, I hate the blind contour exercises, although I understand their value. I enjoy the other longer exercises the most. However, it is the hundreds of gesture drawings that have been the greatest help to me; I don't freeze up or hesitate to draw anymore. If I were to change anything with this book, I would make the gesture drawings the first exercise, perhaps even devote a first chapter to it.

There are other things that could be a little better, but I'm more tolerant of those issues because this book was first published after the man's death about 60 years ago. As a teacher, he was always adapting his exercises to his students needs. If he'd lived a bit longer, some of his published exercises may have been updated. I wish there were more student drawings of varying abilities. However, they were collected after his death; his former students dug through what was left of their old shool papers so that the book could have some drawings. Also, it's important to realize that none of the student drawings are "finished" drawings; they are all exercises (like breathing exercises for the singer...a reference he makes in the introduction). Although the student drawings are fewer than I'd like, there are plenty "finished" and studies of masterpiece drawings that clearly illustrate the value of the exercises.

There are 25 chapters each with a 15-hour schedule of exercises. Most of those chapters give homework in addition to the 15 hours. Some of the chapters are to be repeated once or even twice. The amount of time needed to finish the book is considerable. That really wasn't a problem for me. I was impatient to start seeing initial progress. Now I'm happy with this course of study. For quick studies, there are numerous other choices. One of the most popular ones is "How to Draw What You See"; I think the first half of that book has value. One that I like even better is "Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner".

This book has completely changed my art, my ability, and my enthusiasm in pursuing the goal of being an artist. It is not a book on technique, nor is it a quick fix. It is an intense system of study that explains and teaches alongside you as you work out the problems posed. The book expects that you will attain a model, but one could also use this book with landscapes or still-life. I've actually used a computer with photos of models and that has worked very well (Check out Buddy Scalera's action pose series. They come with cds of images that can be directly loaded onto your computer. Then using your slideshow format, you can time poses and go right along with the book. This might not be the optimum way to do this, but if you're having a hard time finding the time or model to work from, this does give you the ability and freedom to learn your own way).

But back to the book. Early on in my drawing I began to copy other artists and work on techniques alone. My work became very driven then to compete with the original artist which guaranteed that my work would always sort of let me down as it's very hard to try and be someone else :) This book helped free me from those constrictions and gave me the encouragement and opportunity to explore art and drawing with my own heart and eyes and brain without relying on the masters or those who have gone before me to tell me what to see and how to see it. Going through these art lessons sincerely has really enabled me to take pleasure and enjoyment in my work again and to learn the tools of seeing and studying that best enable me to express my heart. So once again, this book is not a quick fix. It assumes one year of study with 6-12 hours of drawing a week (like a college drawing class), but one can of course cut it much shorter if one has the time and desire. The book doesn't give you quick solutions, but instead gives you tasks to do, i.e. "draw 25 gesture drawings" and also gives instruction on how to do it. If you are willing to go along for the ride, you will get better. No doubt, and if you like to draw, I dare say you'll have fun doing it. I have been really astounded by how much better I've gotten. I was studying anatomy books, and reading every book on art instruction I could find, but for some odd reason, I wasn't really improving very fast. But I laid that all aside and started working through this book and it is accomplishing all that I had hoped and more. It's funny now, because I'm gaining confidence in the basics and the work of the masters and other artists is becoming an inspiration instead of a burden to me.

Having taken several drawing and art classes in college, this 10 dollar book (versus the thousands I spent on college) has more value and wisdom than any instruction I received in school. I really can't exclaim enough, how great this book is. It's well written, thoughtful, and very very encouraging. If you've been kind of beat up outside and inside because of your skill level but have the desire to draw and express yourself with art, I really think you'll enjoy and be helped by this book.

The book was published posthumously in 1941 by Nicolaides' students. Their fervor for their late revered teacher is evident in the manner in which the book is written. They developed a rigorous lesson schedule which demands consistent attention of the artist.

I first read The Natural Way to Draw in 1983. In January of 1985 I began a self study course using this book as my guide. I followed every lesson plan and read and re-read until I could recite the book by heart. Too broke to afford a nude model for the lesson plans, I drew my neighbors chickens, cows, horses and sheep, supplementing those subjects with weekly attendance at a drawing group and borrowing the local science teachers human skeleton. Whatever the subject matter, Niccolaides taught me to understand the essence of gesture. A little over a year and a half later, I finished the book. I went on to earn a college degree (BFA)in Painting and to become a professional artist. When I look back at the past 18 years of my life as an artist,this book had the most influence of any that I have ever read or worked with. I highly recommend not just reading this book, but studying it. Devote a year of your life to studying this book and you will be a better artist.

After reviewing the other reviews there may be nothing to say. I first encountered this book while brousing in a book store after my art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. The best thing I remembered was be prepared to throw away your first five thousand mistakes. Whoaa! Nicolides tells us " There is a vast difference between drawing and making drawings. The things you will do-over and over again- are but practice." This is a wonderful course of learning vs. drawing. I have given this text to older children as a learning tool. It is better than physical therapy for people who have visual motor problems. No sane person wants to sit and produce 25 drawings in a half hour. Many people say I can do that but do not understand how long it may take each person to accomplish the same task. I learned to cut and pound as a little boy but it required a mentor to teach me finess. It requires experience to teach me patience. The rest is your passion for art. It is a mentor on your bookshelf if you choose to take this path.

Funnily enough, when I first received this book I was somewhat disappointed. I had learnt to draw with Betty Edward's "Drawing on the right side of the brain" and somehow mister Nicolaide's book seemed a little too academic to me. False. This is a wonderful book, with exercises that to last for a lifetime. The author states that you should use them in the prescribed order, but I think it will benefit those who have worked through the Edwards' book but still want more. Although the book is brilliantly inspirational and oozes with a kind sense of humour, it shouldn't be mistaken as new agey stuff. You do learn to draw if you put the hard work it requires. It is definitely worth every cent (or in my case, peseta)!.

I learned to draw well-enough with this book that a few years later, completely self- taught, with the lessons in this book, that a few years later, at Comic-Con, when I stopped to ask one of my artistic heroes for advice he offered me a scholarship to graduate school. I think that is plenty of a recommendation. I bought this for a friend of mine who regretted that she had given up her artistic pursuits

Somewhat misunderstood. Doesn't teach how to draw, teaches how to learn to draw.
This book is for the dedicated, and it is a beginning. Complete these exercises, but more importantly draw. Draw everyday. Some complain, "It takes years!" Do you plan to quit drawing once you "learn how to draw"? It doesn't take years, it takes a lifetime of hard work. When you've finished with the book you haven't finished your study. I suggest, like Mr. Nicolaides, to proceed to George Bridgman's books.

"From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs. but all I have done before the the age of seventy is not worth bothering with. At seventy five I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At a hundred I shall be a marvelous artist. At a hundred and ten everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing."

Hokusai

Dont be thrown off by Nicolaides' insistence on following his rigid three-hour-daily schedules. His approach is otherwise brilliant, focusing on exercises designed to help you master the various elements of drawing individually.
That so many would recommend "Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain" over this book is ludicrous- Nicolaides' description of contour is no less helpful to the beginner than Betty Edward's, and "Natural Way" goes beyond to encompass anatomy, composition, NUMEROUS ways of understanding/expressing form (cross contour, modelling, etc), and the books high point- the best description of the use of gesture found in any drawing book (alone worth the price of admission). To the fellow who claimed his art teacher mocked the book, someone needs note that Nicolades' book has been used by COUNTLESS PROFESSIONALS, including illustrator Marshall Vandruff, teacher of top fantasy artist Justin Sweet(check out [...] and [...]
Take this book literally at your own peril, for just under the surface are countless gems of wisdom. Do the exercises at your own pace and leisure, and pay special attention to what Nicolades is really trying to tell you - that drawing well requires "seeing" with your impulses and emotions.

I just finished taking a drawing course in which my instructor taught the same concepts that Nicolaides writes about: extensive gesture studies, blind contour drawing, modeling of the form with gesture-mass studies. Honestly, as I worked in class, I had very little idea of what these exercises were for (it would have been great to have had a hold of this book then). I have always been good at rendering figures in a hyper-realistic manner, but as one reviewer described student work at his school as "well rendered work, but its flat, uninspired, and repetative," my work had no life to it. What I found was that the more I practiced seeing and feeling my subject matter through these "scribble" drawings, the freer my line and hand grew, and the more presence I started to see in what I put on the paper.
If you want a method to help you learn to "feel" your work and move you beyond mere rendering, I highly recommend this book. But along with that desire should come a commitment to practice the exercises with an open mind if you want to get the results. I have learned for myself that having a lot of head knowledge about art techniques hasn't made my work vital, nor his it given me the itch in my bones that I need to truly create. Even though this may sound silly, I used to consider myself a good drawer, but now I feel that the door to being an "artist" is opened to me.
If you are more interested in a book to help you practice techniques with less of a time/effort commitment, I recommend Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing. It is more of a "how-to" book for beginning students. It takes a very different teaching approach, more practical, but I like it for the many visual examples, the broad range of fun exercises, and the sections on drawing faces and proportions.

- I just finished doing every exercise in this book. I began the book as a complete novice to art. It took me 15 months of hard work, and dedication to get through it. But it was worth it! In 15 months I have progressed from drawing stick men to producing very credible work.
Creatively, I feel like I've been shot out of a cannon. I found my way of looking at things has dramatically grown. I have become more disciplined and dedicated to learning art as I've progresssed through the book. I notice I have increased mental flexibility and concentration, and am able to memorize more quickly and thoroughly than before. Instead of believing that I could never produce a masterful piece of art, I now believe that I not only can, but will.
I am now busy learning to oil paint with a limited palette, and my work is progressing quickly and enjoyably.
For some reason, I suspect the hardest part of learning art is behind me now. I will continue to return to this book in the future, for inspiration, and to continue to sharpen my seeing and drawing skills.

If you are aiming at drawing becoming the main activity in your life, then this may well be a book for you. Nicolaides takes his time to gradually introduce you to all the secrets and mechanics of drawing. He prepared nothing less than 64 drawing exercises arranged into 25 15-hour lessons, an equivalent of a whole year study at his Art Students' League somewhere in 1930s.

For me drawing has always been more of a fun then a hard work. It must be for this reason that the book was a slight disappointment for me. I find its title slightly misleading: a natural way of doing something must surely be more spontaneous. I also expected more of master-level drawings hinting at what one could possibly achieve with such a laborious approach. However, the selection of pictures is limited to illustrating the text.

On the other hand, I am glad I bought the book. If drawing is the basis of fine art, then Nicolaides has his place in an artist's library.