"Paintings With Personality"

These are two notan designs I did today. The subject is the same in both. I'll post the painting based on the vertical next Monday. I think I'll paint the horizontal as well, I liked them both.

Honey has a tendency to see things in black and white. I, on the other hand, see all manner of shades in just about everything.  In art, our eyes see value before they see color and the viewer is more attracted to paintings with full value. Notan, a Japanese design element, refers to the balance of dark and light patterns. A Notan drawing only uses black and white, the white being the light on our subject and the black the shadow areas. This is the eastern theory of yin-yang in that each is what the other is not, meaning black is not white and white is not black, but still they are one.

The notan approach is favored among artists today to improve their compositions. A notan design is the underlying light and dark abstract form of an art work. They are the shapes that cause a painting to capture the viewers attention and keep them from becoming bored. Paintings based on a notan design are candid and straightforward.

The notan intention is to create a strong design and the more we work with the method, the more we see the interesting abstract shapes within our subject. Values and shapes become more recognizable and more important to us than the forms we are painting. The designs are our model for making compositional decisions.

Another notan of the same subject as the others. I like the vertical above better than this one, the shapes are more interesting.

Notan is a learned skill. Here is a list of ways we can learn to use the notan design method:

1. Choose a subject with one light source at first. More light sources can be added as we become more familiar with the notan method. Squint your eyes to see the lights and darks in the subject while focusing on the abstract shapes. If the shapes aren’t interesting go back at a different time of day to look for a better design. The emphasis of these lights against dark is what makes a painting stunning.
2. Make at least six notan thumbnail sketches on white paper. Begin by drawing rectangles approximately 2” by 3” with a black felt tip marker. Next, do a quick pen drawing of basic shapes inside the rectangles. Don’t try to be careful or correct in your drawing, these are simple black and white notan designs. The idea is to design and place the shapes creatively without worrying about it.
3. Use your black marker to color in the shapes you drew. Fill in every area where no direct light source is striking. Color all gaps between shapes of the same value when they are side-by-side. Once you get your darks, the lights take care of themselves. The areas where we want the highest contrast should be emphasized.
4. Let your negative shapes reinforce the positive shapes, and the dark and light shapes aren’t equal in size, one has to be dominant.
5. The dark shapes lead the viewers eye through the painting. Create places where the eye can pause or completely stop and rest for a bit.

Color isn’t thought about in notan design. The only purpose of color is to enhance the light/dark composition, so it is understated with the notan pattern being the underlying framework of the art.

Your ability to see the lights and darks in your work will improve and you will have better unity with an underlying notan design.

Give notan a try and let me know what you think. Please comment below.

 “To snatch away from us even the darkness beneath trees that stand deep in the forest is the most heartless of crimes. At this rate every place of any beauty … , as the price of being turned over to the masses, will be denuded of trees.”  Jun'ichirō Tanizaki