Nicolaides Book, anyone go through it?

[sweet_sorrow]

Has anyone done The Natural way to Draw or is in the process of doing so? What are your opinions?

Thanks.

[asoir]

i have the book, tryed a few exercises but it's incredibly hard to get past the first "section". you truly need will of steel to proceed through it, i got distracted, lost interest and haven't read it since.

[Flake]

Looooooooooomis.

[sweet_sorrow]

I've had a look at some of Loomis's books as PDFs, they seem really good.

I think, since i really need somewhere to start, I'll try to stick to Nicolaides and around it i'll work with Loomis's books and others. I'm just not sure where to start because i need to improve.

[dose]

Haven't gone through the book completely as I discovered it pretty far into my art education, but I think there's some important stuff in there that I haven't really seen in another book (short of Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain, which is derivative, I think). I think his emphasis on really feeling the subject as you draw is immensely important and something that I see missing from most people's work.

I do agree with Asoir though- the book is difficult to get through. And looking at some of the later exercises I'm not convinced of the need to follow the book all the way through. But like almost anything else- learning to draw does not come free or easy. If you sweat through there will be benefits, but you might not realize it for some time. I did a lot of the exercises in that book in various classes, not knowing that's where they came from. Looking back, I can attribute some of the areas where I feel I have an edge in drawing to the fact that I took those exercises seriously where most others blew them off for whatever reason.

YMMV.

[briggsy@ashtons]

Loooooooooomis on Nicolaides (The Eye of the Painter, p. 112):

"Today there are methods of drawing, some of them quite remarkable, in which the artist, without looking at the paper, tries to move his hand in the rhythms he sees in the subject before him, allowing the pencil to set these rhythms down continuously on the drawing surface. I find that I have to look at the paper in order to hold one part in proportion to another, because I have never trained my hand to "feel" these rhythms as my eye sees them. But it can be done. Those who are interested in learning to draw in this manner should read The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. It is a wonderful book."

[sweet_sorrow]

Well hey, if Loomis says :D