Why Notans and Wet-Into-Wet Painting Should Be Tightly Integrated

What do watercolor nerds do on Christmas Eve? Write a blog post! :D

I’ve been prepping for the next release of my class- From Photo to Final Painting- and one of the big curricular changes has been how I’m going to be teaching wet-into-wet painting. After I taught it the first time, a revelation came to me, all about how notans and composition relate very directly to wet-into-wet painting. I’m excited to apply this approach with students and help them push their abilities further!

Notans Make Us Choose a Hierarchy of Shapes

I just want to take a moment to talk about how important notans can be- as a seeing tool and as a decision-making tool. Notans help us do many useful things, but one of the most important is that creating them helps us clarify the goal of the composition.

In the beginning, the decision making for students can seem mechanical (or totally haphazard!! LOL!). Is this shape black?? or white?? But as you get better you start to see how each decision is actually a point where you can insert your vision as an artist. Because, for sure, notans made by two different artists often end up totally different!

Why?

Generally, different artists have different goals. One element is more important to one than another, they choose different leading lines, different methods of creating balance and hierarchy, etc. Each little decision has repercussions, it creates an echo or a ladder, and as they add up, you can start to see the results embedded in the current “shape of things” (aka the composition).

How?

Well, as we simplify things in the notan, objects in the real world (couches, trees, bridges, houses, etc) coalesce and bond together into larger and larger shapes. These new, larger shapes do many important things. I’m coming back to the shapes again. ;)

The most obvious thing is that these larger, bonded shapes help us create a hierarchy. What’s important? What’s not? What gets swallowed up by the big shapes? What is separated out because it’s important? How do we make its story stronger, more compelling, more interesting visually? It’s a hierarchy expressed through different kinds of contrast and balance- Value-contrast, balance created with big and small shapes, leading lines, delicate, complex edges that welcome us in, or strong, barrier-like ones that keep us out. Shapes capture light and contrast and guide our eyes.

So, all of this is to say that the final physical result of the notan is that it creates a contrast map, a representation of how we’re going to simplify things and translate an image into a painting, but the reason that map even matters is because embedded in its creation is the process of choosing. And we see that “choosing” through the way these bonded shapes are arranged.

Personal Vision —> Decision-making —> Visual hierarchy—> Notan Shapes

Shapes. Shapes shapes shapes. Hahaha!

So Where’s The Part About Wet-Into-Wet?

One of the most powerful, beautiful things that watercolor can do is wet-into-wet painting. To me, that’s where a lot of the magic comes from. And what became clear to me after teaching the class this last time is that this is something we should lean into.

In the last version of the class, we were doing lots of notans, and the notans students were doing were definitely improving over the course of the class. And we’ll be doing lots of notans in the new version too. But I also recognized how hard it is to translate notans into your finished painting. To understand how to apply it. And that’s where I think that wet into wet painting can really be of use.

When we approach the phase where we’re painting and no longer prepping (where the notan is already done), the infinite minutia of the reference photo can be very domineering (or even more daunting- the infinite detail of the world, when painting plein air!). It can be very difficult to let it all go and trust in your notan, in your decision making processes, in the value of simplification and a visual hierarchy. This is when making a point of painting wet-into-wet can really liberate you and help you achieve more compelling results.

When we paint wet into wet, there’s an inherent simplification that occurs. As folks who have tried well know, edges tend to disappear. Sometimes not on purpose! But if we can harness that ability to simplify shapes and bond them together, notans and wet into wet painting should go hand in hand. Each completes the other. In this approach, we use notans to guide our wet into wet application, and we use wet into wet to apply notans.

If you’re making notans, this is the next step to start working on. I encourage folks to try more wet into wet work that’s a clear expression of the shapes you’re making in the notan. This will be a new and expanded focus for the class, and I’m looking forward to working on it with students!