The natural way to draw

What Hacker News says

1. rramadassAug 2024
   You should also definitely checkout The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides.
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2. nxobjectJan 2024
   I learned from Kimon Nicolaides' _The Natural Way to Draw_ – although it's really more of a teacher's guidebook for many months' worth of regular drawing sessions, there are some "lesson plans" for classical subjects like slowly introducing colour into your practice, drapery, etc.
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3. crq-ymlDec 2023
   Learning some ability to draw and paint takes roughly the same amount of persistence as learning to write. That is, you have to recall what a struggle it was to hold the pencil and make a steady mark from the wrist...and then apply that to the kinds of marks you make for drawing, which can be longer, more varied, and use a different grasp on the tool.

   And then you also have to learn some "shape literacy" if you want to control how you see things. This is likewise comparable to learning to read in that there are ways of breaking down images to understand them as "letter", "word", and "sentence".

   When we know how to write but not to draw, we draw like we write, using motions from the wrist and observing things in terms of symbolic meaning - the human figure flattens out into a hand shape, an arm shape, an eye shape.

   But there's very little mystery to "what do you do about that" - you grab a book of exercises like Keys to Drawing or Natural Way to Draw, and you try to see the object you want to study through the exercise. Because we recognize silhouettes first, and we make marks as lines first, contour drawing is a typical starting point for practicing both "seeing" and "doing", and that's something you can spend many months on just by itself.

   If you want to force a designed result, rather than the result from your eye and hand, you start to apply technology, and that can mean a very old technology like using a grid and rulers(as old as the ancient Egyptians), or it can mean digital tools and tracing over photos.

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4. webnrrd2kAug 2023
   Also, Keys to Drawing, by Dodson is really good, with more of an emphasis leading to painting. The Natural Way to Draw, by Nickolaides, is really good for life drawing.
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5. dcanelhasFeb 2022
   My suggestion is to follow Kimon Nicolaides' "The natural way to draw" It's almost the antithesis of Betty Edwards' "Drawing on right side of the brain". Follow the exercises as if you were doing push-ups. At some point you'll probably want to get a model, spend your money on that.
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6. ulisesrmzrocheMar 2021
   There are two books you need. You’ve already gotten the title of the first one. That’s the first one you should read. When you’re done, the other is “The Natural Way to Draw” by Kimon Nicolaides.

   It’s weird to find something that can be so easily answered but there it is. Truly great books.

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