the natural way to draw - My Sketch Journal

For representational artists, the 20^th century provided little in the way of good artistic training. While some opportunities for classical art training have recently arisen, many colleges and art schools are still dominated by modern art. For this reason, many representational artists (myself included) are primarily self-taught. These are seven books that changed my artistic life.

Thankfully, there are books that survived the modern art purge, as well as some newer ones that can be a real help for those who want to learn. Below is a list of books that had a dramatic impact on my artistic development which I highly recommend to my students and anyone else looking to improve their artistic development.

The Art of Field Sketching by Claire Walker Leslie

The first of the books that changed my artistic life. I picked up The Art of Field Sketching on a whim when I was a teenager aspiring to be a wildlife artist. Growing up in rural Minnesota, this book’s suggested method of keeping a sketch journal was a tremendous inspiration. It had me waking up at 4:30 AM on weekends and heading out to the woods and wetlands to record my experiences of nature (not bad for a teenage boy). Those were some of my most enjoyable times as an artist. The suggestion to do five sketches a day every day for five years was forever etched in my mind. And when I decided to return to art after a ten-year stint as an accomplished musician, it was the inspiration of this book that kept me going, even when I had only 10 minutes a day to sketch. If you love sketching, especially nature, this book is for you.

The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides

The Natural Way to Draw and some of its methods were mentioned in The Art of Field Sketching. Naturally (no pun intended), I bought it and dove in. Kimon gives a structured and fairly time-consuming daily routine (up to three hours a day) for those who really want to develop their drawing skills. I devoted many after-work hours to these exercises and they made a big difference. Even though I never finished the book, I can see its impact on my drawing 20 years later. Of the five main aspects of representational art (drawing, value, color, edges, composition), I consider drawing my strongest thanks to this book.

Harley Brown’s Eternal Truths for Every Artist

Another one of the books that changed my artistic life. Eternal Truths for Every Artist is a great book for beginning and mid-level painters who want to learn principles, that once mastered, will take your work to the next level. Regardless of your medium, Harley gives you some key things to consider with examples and demonstrations, not to mention an extensive portfolio of his beautiful work.

With clear language and examples, Harley touches on things like values, edges, abstract compositional shapes, the Munsell color system, human anatomy, reflected light, and much more. Its exciting layout makes it an easy, quick reference when painting. Harley also offers several helpful lists such as 15 things you should definitely leave out of your paintings, 30 “magic” solutions to common problems, and a 10 point checklist when working from photos. If you want to move beyond the limited formula method of the Bob Ross crowd, this book is a great place to start. I believe this book it out of print, but still can be found on Amazon and other places.

Alla Prima II Everything I Know About Painting and More by Richard Schmid

I actually learned from the first edition, Alla Prima (because Alla Prima II didn't exist yet) but of all the books that changed my artistic life, this one probably had the biggest impact. It's is the one I most highly recommend for painters who want to seriously master their craft. Richard’s book is a masterpiece from a master artist who breaks down all the principles of representational painting into clear and easy to understand language. His writing style is a joy to read and his paintings are nothing short of phenomenal. He covers everything from starting a painting to an in-depth analysis of light and color temperature. I found his explanation of color groundbreaking.

All that said, this is not a quick, easy formula book; this is a book that will teach you how to see nature and paint what you see if you put in the work. And just like Harley Brown’s book, there is a strong emphasis on painting from life as well as some tips for painting from photos. If you are a serious painter who is willing to put in the work, this book is a tremendous guide. Alla Prima II has everything the first edition had but with more in-depth explanations ( I own them both). With a price tag of around $140, it's not a cheap buy, but you really get what you pay for with this book.

Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting by John F. Carlson

Hands down, Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting is the Bible of landscape painting. Most every professional landscape artist refers to the timeless principles that John teaches. I would dare say that many contemporary landscape artists (myself included) would probably be groping in the dark were it not for this book.

Painting technique is not the consideration here, rather John reveals things to look for in nature such as angles and consequent values, the size of objects and light diffraction, aerial perspective, etc. Not adhering to these principles has been the downfall of most failed landscape paintings. His chapter on materials can basically be skipped over since it was written half a century ago (unless you want to try cleaning your oil brushes with kerosene). Also, all the photos are in black and white. But with the timeless principles, it teaches, and at a very reasonable price (less than $12), this book is an absolute must for any serious landscape painter.

Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Payne

Edgar was a master landscape artist, one of the founding members of the California Art Club, and one of the pioneers of California Impressionism. Composition of Outdoor Painting, while not an easy read, is filled with compositional principles that every landscape artist should study. Edgar takes us on a philosophical journey discussing what he had learned from a lifetime of painting. He gives us many thumbnail sketches showing different compositional ideas such as the steelyard, balanced scales, the S-concept, openings and exits, unequal spacing, and more.

To be honest, this book will most likely confuse and frustrate beginning artists. When I first tried to read it, I had to put it down for several years, but when I picked it back up, I had a better understanding and ended up underlining half of the book. If you are a serious landscape painter, buy this book and read it. If you are in the earlier stages of your artistic development but have every intention of getting serious, buy this book and keep it on your shelf for a few years, then read it. I say buy it now because it does go out of print at times. The approximately $50 price tag may seem steep for a book of this size, but you won’t find this information in any other book.

Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gerome: Drawing Course

If you're looking to refine your drawing skills, whether your subject matter is the human figure or not, the Charles Bargue Drawing Course will get you there. It's a collection of drawings done of the ancient Greek statues, master drawings, and rough sketches of the human figure that the student is meant to copy. The course starts out by showing you simplified renderings and moving from there to complete drawings. Bear in mind that years of copying masterworks was the primary method of initial artistic development before the era of modern art.

The thinking behind this course is that if you draw beautiful masterworks over and over, beauty will be ingrained in your own work, thinking that I totally agree with it. This is the opposite approach of modern art which completely threw out these concepts and focused purely on self-centered instinct and resulted in self-centered art (sorry, I believe that the only urinals in art museums should be the ones in the bathroom). Thankfully, this course survived the purge and is seeing a revival. If you have ever wanted to go through a classical drawing course and couldn't find one, here is your opportunity. You can buy the book or download it for free by searching on the internet.

Keep drawing and painting!

Jason Tako is a nationally known fine artist who specializes in western, wildlife, plein air, and Historical Native American subject matter. He spent his learning years sketching the wetlands and wooded areas of rural Minnesota. He has been featured in Plein Air Magazine and Western Art Collector Magazine and he was the Featured Artist for the 2020 Southeastern Wildlife Expo. See his work at www.JasonTako.com and his demonstrations on his YouTube Channel.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links in which I will earn a commission, but there is no increased cost to the buyer. I link companies and their products because I use them and believe in them, regardless of whether I get a commission or not.

Drawing by Feeling

So what is empty-headed drawing? When I decided to take up drawing seriously in my mid-20s, I dove head-first into Kimon Nicolaides classic, The Natural Way to Draw. This book led me through a rigid, daily discipline of approximately three hours of drawing exercises. These exercises proved to be invaluable in teaching me to see and draw shape and form in a very tactile manner. With Kimon’s method, you are supposed to make your best attempt to feel the outline and form by imagining that your pencil is touching the edge of the subject. Other exercises ask you to imagine you are sculpting the form of the subject with your pencil. That exercise really resonated with me and I spent hours “sculpting” everything I could from trees to the human form. I later learned this was the tactile approach to drawing, as defined by master artist and teacher Ted Seth Jacobs.

The Limitations of Touch

I never completely finished Kimon’s book. And while it still sits on my bookshelf periodically inspiring feelings of nostalgia, I got far enough through it to solidify my drawing skills. However, as more and more subjects entered the pages of my sketch journal, I realized there was a serious limitation to the tactile approach. Tactile by its very nature involves the sense of touch, but if there is no form to touch, the tactile approach loses its benefit. And there is one primary element that we see all the time that has absolutely no visible form, and that element is light.

The Dream (Il Sogno), circa 1533, Michelangelo Buonarroti

Drawing by Seeing

Thankfully, there is another approach to drawing that solves this dilemma, and that is the optical approach. To put it simply, while the tactile approach implies drawing how something feels, the optical approach implies drawing how something looks. The first is more intellectual, the second is strictly visible.

To demonstrate, let’s say you are drawing a face in a dark room that is intensely lit from one side. In this scene, the light side of the face is visible, while the dark side is barely visible. A strict tactile approach would require you to indicate the outline of the entire face, even the barely visible shadow side; the fact that one side of the face is in light and the other in dark is secondary, if not disregarded. A strict optical approach would de-emphasize the outlines of the form and focus merely on capturing the light and dark abstract shapes, which when assembled correctly on paper, look like the face you are drawing.

John Singer Sargent

Empty Headed Drawing: The Optical Approach

You could almost say that the tactile approach is more intellectual and requires the artist to draw what he or she knows about the face, while the optical approach only requires the artist to draw what he or she sees and nothing more. In a way, the optical approach requires one to suspend their knowledge of things and their prejudice of what they think they know about them and see and draw only abstract shapes. I dare say the optical approach is empty-headed drawing. By using this term, I don’t mean to imply that the artist who uses the optical approach lacks in intellectual capability, only that it requires one to not think intellectually about the subject they are drawing. They must merely see, and draw what they see, nothing more.

You Are Seeing Shapes

Admittedly, many artists use a combination of both the tactile and optical approach when drawing. I believe this is because the pencil, unlike the brush, makes thin, precise lines. Therefore, many artists tend toward outlining form and afterwards imply light and shadow through various means of shading. Neither this, nor a strict tactile approach is inferior by any means. A well-drawn contour line contains a delicate, lyrical form of expressive beauty that cannot be replicated by mere shapes of light and dark. But despite all its beauty and expression, it is ultimately not how the eye sees reality. When you look at an object, you are not seeing an outline, rather a shape that meets another shape, even if that shape is empty space. The edge where one shape meets another shape may be expressed with a line, but it may also be expressed with shapes of light and dark, which is the essence of the optical approach.

Which Approach is Best?

So, does it matter which approach I take, or what degree of the two approaches I implement? In the matter of art and self-expression, neither approach is superior to the other. However, representational art consists almost entirely how you look at things and interpret them. And having a better understanding of how you are viewing reality will give you better chance at expressing it. The great thing about the optical approach is that you don’t need to attempt to draw something you can barely see, and you can also draw things that don’t have defined borders, such as atmosphere. But most importantly, you don’t need to be a scientific expert on what you are drawing, you only need to draw the abstract shapes of light and dark in front of you. You don’t need to draw a hand, but the lights and darks that when assembled correctly look like a hand. And this can give the artist a tremendous sense of freedom.

We will talk more next time on the practical applications of these two approaches. Till next time, keep drawing.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out Drawing Without Boundaries. To see my artwork, visit www.JasonTako.com and visit my YouTube channel.