A month of notans and an invite!

Oct 29

Welcome back, folks! If you’ve not been following me on Facebook or Instagram (click on each link to subscribe to my accounts), I’ve been doing the Inktober Challenge, which is to do an ink drawing each day for a month. I’ve been doing notans from my own reference photos with other artists in my free Facebook group “From Photo to Final Painting” and it’s been honesty really fun. We’ve got over 160 members so far. Lots of new folks I’m just now meeting from the challenge, etc.

I’ll be following this up by (attempting) to do a painting each week from a reference photo I did a successful notan for. I’m hoping others will come along with me and explore the next step together— the process of applying notans to making a painting! I’m sure there’s lots to learn and share about.

From Tiny Sketches to Little Art Objects-

Notan-making is something I recommend because it can help artists start to see bigger shapes and patterns more easily. The process of reduction to 2 values can really help you assess contrast and balance, leading lines, areas where there is room to breath and active, busy spaces. In truth, a lot of that can be figured out with just a little thumbnail— perhaps 1x2, or 2x3. These are easily achievable in 5-15 minutes or so, depending on how detailed you want to go.

Of course, sometimes I get interested in a subject and expand it to, say, 5x7 or so. These can take a long time, 45 minutes or more, as I resolve compositional issues and become acquainted with the proportions of shapes in the image. The bigger I go, the closer I get to a “real” painting, and the more I have to solve finer and finer problems. Not essential for a notan’s primary purpose, but a meditative pleasure none the less. And you get a little art object out of it! :)

Step by step, back and forth-

If you look closely, you’ll see that lots of notans have thick white gouache applied. I move shapes as needed, fixing mistakes, editing the reference photo, etc. I also tried introducing a 3rd value— something I’ve not done before, but group members explored as well. Sometimes you think you need it but you don’t. Sometimes you really do need it. Sometimes you have to use it to create more of a “rendering” to figure out how you can now simplify it and use only 2 values. It’s all a process of educating ourselves about subject, paying attention, and having fun.

Sometimes things don’t work out-

Part of making the notan process is that it helps you get better acquainted with the subject, much like a value study does. However, value studies are often about making a rendering, whereas a notan is a process of distillation. Simplifcation. Seeing the big shapes and how the stack one against another. When you do this, sometimes it’s really helpful just because you can’t resolve certain issues. Issues that really only become apparent when you do a notan. Sometimes, the notan comes out fine, but it’s just too detailed, too… whatever. It’s not worth the effort to paint. Then doing the notan gets it out of my system. :) Then I think— well, atleast I only spent 15/30/45 minutes on this, instead of hours.

The next step is paintings…

Of course, on some level, this is all preliminary. An exploration process. I went through last years photos and chose about 50 out of 3000 photos I thought I might want to paint. 1 in 60!! Out of that, perhaps 30 or 40 will be worth painting. Out of that, perhaps 15-25 will be really very good to me. Hopefully more, since I did the notans and am sort of “pre-distilling” things. But it’s a process of funneling down reference photos into compelling compositions to paint.

If you’re interested in seeing the reference photos, participating in the process of making your own paintings (either from my reference photos and notans, or your own), or you’d just like to see how I go through the process of making art, join the Facebook group and come along on the journey!