Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural way to draw

[Samszym]

Okay, I got said book today in the mail, and I need to know some stuff. I've read a lot of different things about it, so i gotta know, is the book good to learn from first of all. Second, I don't really have manila paper or a canvas thing to hold up drawing paper like it says I should have. should I get one, or can I just draw in my sketchbook? and about the contour drawings, the schedule says to make 1 drawing with 30 minutes. I can't do that! These things take like 5 minutes at longest, and there's no way I can draw one thing for an hour! So anyone who's familiar with this book, got any tips? thanks.

[Arshes Nei]

Check out the similar threads below on the bottom of this thread

[Flashback]

No offense, but have you read the book?

[Samszym]

no, not thoroughly. Just wanted to make sure it was good, seems like a ton of work.

[Arshes Nei]

no, not thoroughly. Just wanted to make sure it was good, seems like a ton of work.

My bad, thought you were trying to learn to be a better artist?

[Samszym]

D: that was dumb of me. Just if it's generally regarded as a bad source of learning, I don't want to put in 3 hours a day when i could be learning more elsewhere. But it doesn't seem to be, so I will.

[Arshes Nei]

That's alright.

Like I said, please see the Similar Threads at the bottom of this thread. It has more info on his books and people discussing him before. It will probably give you some ideas on how to approach it.

[armando]

It's a good book. You can use any paper you want, his advice is to get the cheapest paper you can find, you can use those free advertiser newsapers if you want. He literally means for you to draw for that length of time, later on he asks you to do one for 5 hours. I've never done the full workload myself, I only did as much as I thought gave me the idea of what he was driving at.

[Samszym]

woah. my longest single contour drawing was 7 minutes. I guess I should just try to draw slower. I'd need something really complicated to draw for a whole hour...

[Arshes Nei]

woah. my longest single contour drawing was 7 minutes. I guess I should just try to draw slower. I'd need something really complicated to draw for a whole hour...

I think slowing down will help you be more accurate. From your sketchbook, while they're generally good studies, I noticed there's a rushed feeling to them instead of exploring things in the figure. Learning to get sweeping lines of energy, than angular strokes of rush will do you some good ;)

I remember Sheldon making a similar statement about learning to slow down in drawing but can't remember the exact video but I'll just toss in a cookie for this one, and you can find it yourself

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[Nezumi Works]

woah. my longest single contour drawing was 7 minutes. I guess I should just try to draw slower. I'd need something really complicated to draw for a whole hour...

Hah! That really puts some of the 4-hour long poses we did in life drawing class into perspective.

Here's an exercise I was given a ways back to help you in that regard. Take a pad of paper and place it so you don't have to brace it. Put your other hand far enough away that you can't see your drawing hand easily. Put on a timer for 20 minutes. Now slowly draw the distant hand without looking at your drawing hand, following the contour around and trying to move your hand as your eyes move. This trains a few things: hand-eye co-ordination, understanding of contour, understanding of the hand, patience enough to do longer drawings. Understand the drawings will look like someone drew them without looking, but that's not the point. Besides, you do that every day for a month, you're definitely gonna get better.