The Natural Way to Draw, a review

The Natural Way to Draw: a working plan for art study by Kimon Nicolaides (1941, Houghton Muffin Company)

Kimon provides a pedological plan for a year long immersion into learning to draw. He uses the analogy of learning correct breathing before singing a song as a means to encourage readers to learn to draw before they produce “drawings" and “paintings”. There are 68 exercises for the student to do in a mindful way. The exercises are aimed toward increasing the student’s skills sequentially.

Here is a listing of his exercises for Section 1:

1. Contour - when Kimon says 'contour' in the first chapter he means what has come to be known as 'blind contour'.  The student focuses on the contour of the model, places the pencil on the paper and moves the pencil simultaneously with his eyes as his eyes trace along the model's edge.
2. Gesture - draw the action you fel as you look at the model. These are short (1 to 2 minute) drawings. Kimon suggests that you go to where people are gathered and moving to do gesture drawings (a playground, a busy walkway, etc)
3. Cross contour - the inclusion of lines that follow the contour of the form going from one side of the model's body to the other: "the line of a cross contour follows around a shape of the figure somewhat as a barrel hoop follows the rounded shape of a barrel."

He wants the art student to learn to 'see' and not just the visual world. With the gesture drawings he invites the student to draw the energy of the pose. He has other exercises for the student to draw the weight of the model and to use their pencil, crayon, charcoal, and ink to 'sculpt' the model on the page.

In addition he provides a means for the budding artist to train their imagination

1. Potential gesture - Imagine what the model will do next and draw it
2. Memory - the model takes three 320 second poses and steps down. Draw the three poses.
3. Reverse - while looking at the model, draw the model's mirror image.
4. Right angle - while looking at the model, imagine seeing him/her from a right angle to your line of sight and draw  that view
5. Back - with your back to the model, take glances over your shoulder and draw
6. Daily composition - a 15 minute gesture drawing of a scene from your past

Kimon leads the student to use various media::

1. Charcoal
2. Lithography crayon
3. Ink
4. Watercolor
5. Oil paint

He proposes that the student artist plan to do 3 hours of drawing each day, five days a week. He provides a 5 day schedule at the beginning of each section (chapter). There are 25 sections so he gives the reader a 325 hour plan for his/her course of study. Here is Kimon's Schedule 1:

	A	B	C	D	E
30 minutes	Contour  (1)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)
30 minutes	Contour  (1)	Contour  (1)	Contour  (1)	Contour  (1)	Cross Contour  (1)
15 minutes	Contour  (1)	Gestures  (15)	Gestures  (15)	Gestures  (15)	Gestures  (15)
15 minutes	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest
30 minutes	Contour  (1)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)
60 minutes	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)

Obviously, to take advantage of his wisdom, you'll need to incorporate these exercises into your own schedule.

Beginning with Schedule 5 he encourages you to do a Daily Composition, a small (5 X 7) memory drawing of some scene (figure(s) and context) which you witnessed in the last 24 hours. This is a fast gesture drawing taking no more than 15 minutes.

Here are some figure drawing YouTube playlists of timed art model sessions:

1. (NON-NUDE SERIES) Daily Life Drawing Sessions - fourteen 35 minute sessions
2. Friday Evening  Figure Drawing - forty-eight 1 hour or 2-1/2 hour sessions
3. Drawing Sessions - eight 35 minute sessions
4. Daily Life Drawing Sessions - eleven 25 minute sessions and twenty-three 35 minute sessions
5. Figure Drawing Sessions - six 25 minute sessions (There are 11 in the playlist, but 5 are in other playlists)
6. Human Anatomy for Artists - eleven short videos (17 seconds to 5 minutes)
7. Female Anatomy for Artists - twenty videos, six 35 minutes and the rest between 1 and 2-1/2 minutes.

This is 135 hours of drawing (Let's see, if I do 30 minutes a day for 5 days a week, it will only take me 54 weeks!)

Kimon's objective is not to have the reader learn how to draw but learn how to learn to draw. The old adage of giving someone a fish or teaching someone to fish comes to mind. It's a grand objective, but I don't think he accomplishes it. His work is well organized, purposely leading the student from exercise to exercise. He encourages the reader to take their time and be mindful (for someone like me, that means to not be task focused but look, see, and observe what is going on in front of me and differentiate that from what is going on inside of me) and from this the student may learn how to learn to draw. Good luck getting mindfulness from a book (although, I must say that the last five paragraphs of his Introduction made as much sense to me as a zen koan, which, I understand, is a key to mindfulness.)

Aside from that, the book, if it's used, is well worth the price of admission.

As of March 15, 2021, available at

Abe Books for $4.65 or $6

Thrift Books for $10 or $12

Barnes & Noble for $19