Kimon Nicolaїdes was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 teacher, author and artist. During World War I, he served in the U.S. Army in France as a camouflage

Camouflage

Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...

 artist.

Early life

Nicolaïdes was born in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, where his Greek-born father worked as an importer of Asian artifacts. His mother's American ancestors date back to the Colonial period. He made his living initially by a variety of jobs, including picture framing, journalism, and even by appearing once in a film as an extra, playing the role of an art student. Despite his family's opposition, he did in fact become an art student, during which he attended the Art Students' League

Art Students League of New York

The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...

 in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, where he studied with John Sloan and George Bridgman

George Bridgman

George Brant Bridgman was a Canadian-American painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New York for some 45 years....

.

Camouflage service

He served in the U.S. Army in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, where he was one of the first American camouflage artists, serving in the same unit as Barry Faulkner

Barry Faulkner

Barry Faulkner was an American artist who was primarily known for his murals. During World War I, he and sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry organized artists for training as camouflage specialists , an effort that contributed to the founding of the American Camouflage Corps in 1917.-Background:Faulkner...

, Sherry Edmundson Fry

Sherry Edmundson Fry

Sherry Edmundson Fry was an American sculptor, who also played a prominent role in U.S. Army camouflage during World War I.-Early years:...

, Abraham Rattner

Abraham Rattner

Abraham Rattner was an American artist, best known for his richly colored paintings, often with religious subject matter. During World War I, he served in France with the U.S. Army as a camouflage artist.-Early life:...

 and others. Among his wartime duties, he often worked with contour maps, which may have occasioned his subsequent use of "contour drawing" as the first exercise in the famous book he later wrote on the study of drawing

Teaching career

Following World War I, he returned to New York to teach at the Art Students' League. In the process, he developed a method of teaching drawing that he shared in a famous and widely used book, titled The Natural Way to Draw.

His influence

At the time of Nicolaïdes' death, the manuscript for The Natural Way to Draw was incomplete. A close friend and former student, Mamie Harmon, oversaw its completion and its publication in 1941. (Harmon's papers are available in the Archives of American Art.) . His influence on the teaching of drawing has been long-lasting and substantial, and his book is still in use today. In brief, he advocated a three-pronged way of learning to draw, through (1) slow and meticulous contour drawing, (2) free and rapid gesture drawing, and (3) vigorous tonal drawings of weight or mass. His method was in ways opposed to that of John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

, the famed 19th-century British art critic who had earlier written a text on The Elements of Drawing.