Quotes from Kimon Nicolaides

Man can make only the rules. He cannot make the laws, which are the laws of nature. It is the understanding of these laws that enables a student to draw.

Art should be concerned more with life than with art.

Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see - to see correctly - and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye.

Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see -- to see correctly -- and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye.

The sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes the sooner you will be able to correct them.

You should draw not what the thing looks like, not even what it is, but what it is doing…Gesture has no precise edges, no forms. The forms are in the act of changing. Gesture is movement in space.

Technique should be taught, not as an end in itself, but as something related to individual expression, as a means toward an end. One cannot separate technique from expression. There is only expression.

The first function of an art student is to observe, to study nature.

All that you need in the way of technique for drawing is bound up in the technique of seeing - that is, of understanding, which after all is mainly dependent on feeling. If you attempt to see in the way prescribed by any mechanical system of drawing, old or new, you will lose the understanding of the fundamental impulse. Your drawing becomes a meaningless diagram and the time so spent is wasted.

This book was written to be used. It is not meant simply to be read any more than you would sit down to read through an arithmetic book without any attempt to work out the problems it describes.

There is no such thing as getting more than you put into anything.