PaintsightA notan is a picture reduced to two values, light and dark, with all detail, color and modeling left out. It shows whether the big shapes of a design work before you paint anything.
Where the word comes from
The American painter and teacher Arthur Wesley Dow brought the word into Western art teaching in his book Composition, first published in 1899. He took it from Japanese art, glossed it as "dark, light", and made it one of three building blocks of a picture, with line and color. In Japanese the word (濃淡, nōtan) is broader: it is used for shades and strength, and often for flavor, so Dow's meaning is a simplification.
Dow drew a careful line between notan and light and shadow. Light and shadow is a fact of the scene in front of you. Notan is a design choice: how you arrange areas of dark and light so they make a satisfying pattern on the flat picture, whatever their color.
What a notan shows you
- Whether the picture reads at a glance. A strong design usually still works as a two-value pattern. If the notan is a jumble of small, equal spots, the painting is likely to look busy too.
- The balance of light and dark. Most strong pictures are mostly light or mostly dark, not half and half. A notan makes that proportion obvious.
- Where the shapes connect. Darks that join into one big shape, and lights that link across the picture, hold a composition together. A notan shows those connections, and the places where a small change would link two shapes.
- The focal point. The eye goes to the strongest contrast. If the sharpest edge between light and dark isn't where you want attention, you can change it before you paint.
How to make one
- Choose your reference photo and crop it to the shape of your canvas.
- Decide where the split between light and dark goes. Everything darker than the split becomes black, everything lighter becomes white. A split near the middle of the photo's tones is a good start.
- Simplify. Merge small shapes into their neighbors until the pattern is a few big, clear shapes.
- Try more than one. Move the split lighter and darker, or swap which side is black. Painters often make several small notans and pick the strongest.
By hand, a notan is a thumbnail sketch in black marker or ink, a few inches across. On a photo, the notan and value study maker does the split for you: choose 2 values, then set the split by hand or let it find the photo's natural break between light and dark.
From notan to a value study
A notan uses two values. Most paintings need a few more to show form and distance, so the next step is a value study of 3 to 5 values: see how many values a painting should have. The notan stays underneath: if the two-value pattern was strong, the painting usually will be.
Sources
- Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition, ninth edition, 1914 (first published 1899), chapter 1, "Line, Notan, Color". Project Gutenberg.
- Notan, Wikipedia, for the Japanese word's wider meaning.
