15/12/2015 Kimon Nicolaides and The Natural Way to Draw

http://www.howtodrawjourney.com/kimon-nicolaides.html 1/3

Kimon Nicolaides and "The Natural Wayto Draw"

Kimon Nicolaides was born inWashington DC in 1891. He grewup exposed to the aestheticexperience because his Greekfather imported Asian artefacts. He knew early that he wanted tobe a painter, and faced with hisparents’ opposition, he ended byrunning away from home to go toNew York.

There he enrolled at the ArtStudents League, and supportedhimself with odd jobs ranging frombeing a film extra (he played an artstudent!) to framing pictures. Hisfather eventually relented when hesaw his son’s devotion to his

Receive your free drawing lessons right in your inbox everyweek.

These are not just little tips and techniques, but a full course oflearning how to see, think, and draw like an artist.

First name

Email address

START DRAWING TODAY! >>

START FREE DRAWINGLESSONS

15/12/2015 Kimon Nicolaides and The Natural Way to Draw

http://www.howtodrawjourney.com/kimon-nicolaides.html 2/3

vocation, and paid for his studies.

Nicolaides volunteered when World War I broke out, serving as a camouflage artist for the US. Interestingly, part of his duties entailed work on contour maps, which would seem to have been how hecame to later develop his famous “contour drawing” method for teaching drawing.

"Death of Lincoln", KimonNicolaides

After the war Nicolaides worked asan artist in Paris for a year, with aone-man show held at a gallerythere; on his return to the States hesettled in New York, where he helda first exhibit at the Old WhitneyStudio Club (now the WhitneyMuseum) and began teaching atthe Art Students League.

Over the following 15 years hiswarmth, sense of humor and highprinciples endeared him to literallyhundreds of students, and he isconsidered even today one of arthistory’s greatest drawingteachers.

This is greatly due to posthumous publication of his book “The Natural Way to Draw”, incomplete whenhe died at age 47 after a six-week illness; a friend and former student who had been working with him onthe manuscript saw to its completion and publication after his death.

Drawing students are often put offby this nevertheless still popularwork, owing to its wordiness andthe daunting schedule of lessonsNicolaides imposed as heassumed the reader was “about toembark on a year of art study”. Indeed, what he put in his bookwas the program for his one-year

15/12/2015 Kimon Nicolaides and The Natural Way to Draw

http://www.howtodrawjourney.com/kimon-nicolaides.html 3/3

drawing class at the League.

Like many other before and afterme, I undertook the program, and itended by being simply too much tosustain.

But there are nevertheless two important types of exercises that he sets out in his work that are of greatvalue: gesture drawing and contour drawing.

Essentially, Kimon Nicolaides felt that the desire to draw was as fundamental and natural as the desire totalk, and drawing, like talking, was about learning how to do things the right way from the beginning.

He felt that drawing well had nothing to do with technique, aesthetics or anything else. It depended onlyon one thing: right observation of the world.

He insisted that students had to discover this manner of right observation by themselves, and that the artteacher’s job was to teach them not how to draw...but how to learn to draw.

Go from "Kimon Nicolaides" to "Plato: What is Art Anyway?"

New! Comments

8 people like this. Sign Up to see what your friends like.Like

Kimon Nicolaïdes

Kimon Nicolaїdes (1891–1938) was a Greek, Americanart teacher, author and artist. During World War I, heserved in the U.S. Army in France as a camouflage artist.

1 Early life

Nicolaïdes was born in Washington, D.C., where hisGreek-born father worked as an importer of Asian arti-facts. His mother’s American ancestors date back to theColonial period. He made his living initially by a varietyof jobs, including picture framing, journalism, and evenby appearing once in a film as an extra, playing the role ofan art student. Despite his family’s opposition, he did infact become an art student, during which he attended theArt Students’ League in NewYork, where he studied withJohn Sloan and George Bridgman. At the Art StudentsLeague he met the avant gard couple Wilhelmina WeberFurlong and her husband Thomas Furlong (artist)[1]

2 Camouflage service

He served in the U.S. Army in France during World WarI, where he was one of the first American camouflageartists, serving in the same unit as Barry Faulkner, SherryEdmundson Fry, Abraham Rattner and others. Amonghis wartime duties, he often worked with contour maps.

3 Teaching career

FollowingWorldWar I, he returned to NewYork to teachat the Art Students’ League.[2][3] In the process, he devel-oped a method of teaching drawing that he shared in theworld famous and widely used The Natural Way to Draw(1941).

4 His influence

At the time of Nicolaïdes’ death, the manuscript for TheNatural Way to Draw was incomplete. A close friendand former student, Mamie Harmon, oversaw its com-pletion and its publication in 1941. (Harmon’s papers areavailable in the Archives of American Art.).[4] His influ-ence on the teaching of drawing has been long-lastingand substantial, and his book is still in use today. In

brief, he taught drawing by (1) exploring the edge of thesubject with 'contour drawing', (2) encouraging free andrapid 'gesture drawing', (3) encouraging tonal drawings ofweight or mass, and (4) (most importantly) prescribing adaily exercise of 'memory drawing'.

5 References[1] The Biography of Wilhelmina Weber Furlong: The Trea-

sured Collection of GoldenHeart Farm byClint B.Weber,ISBN 978-0-9851601-0-4

[2] Art Students League of New York - Instructors and Lec-turers - Past and Present

[3] Houghton Mifflin - bio

[4] Mamie Harmon Papers Relating to Kimon Nicolaides,1935-1985 / Archives of American Art

1

2 6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

6 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1 Text• Kimon Nicolaïdes Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimon_Nicola%C3%AFdes?oldid=666776015 Contributors: Stan Shebs,Woohookitty, LOL, Lockley, Akihabara, Bluebot, Blauhaus, Daisy2, Missvain, Magioladitis, Waacstats, Hellsaber, Johnbod, Lightbot,Yobot, Amadeus webern, Sionk, DefaultsortBot, RjwilmsiBot, VIAFbot, Alpine4now, HasteurBot, Bblanford, KasparBot and Anonymous:3

6.2 Images

6.3 Content license• Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0