Transcription
I thought I would start by asking you what really goes on in the act of composition, because that is fundamentally what the noan gets at, right? So, anybody want to hazard, hazard a guess? I'm not really asking for a definition, but like, what goes on? What goes on when you're composing a picture with shape?
Yes, shape. You're basically making an arrangement of shapes. Okay, now there's lots of other things that go on in a picture, you know, like color and line and, uh, paint texture and all kinds of things. Uh, but underneath it all, there's shape and pattern.
So, what the noton is, it's a type of study. I call it a study, and it takes the image and puts it in black and white. And by putting it in black and white, it can assign the shapes in a very apparent and obvious way. That's essentially what, what happens. So, it's kind of a gateway.
Another analogy that I often use is like an x-ray, right? So, I have a skeletal structure, very similar to yours. You don't see my bones, right? But there's no question that that skeletal structure informs my outer shape. It, it isn't the painting, it's the underst structure, it's the underpinning. And when we see it in this way, in black and white, which is not a natural way to see things, but when we see it that way, it makes it much more apparent and obvious.
If a composition is based on shapes, all we see here is abstract pattern and shape. And then later, we hinge our color onto it, our color drawing, detail, and everything else that goes into a painting. But in the context of the way I teach no 10 and the way I talk about it, this is, um, a gateway. It's, it's a way to access the internal energies.
Now, it's not really an extremely natural way of seeing the world. I call it a synthetic way, meaning it's, it's kind of artificial because we don't see the world like this. Uh, for example, this is a study in four values. Okay? Now, that's not quite like the world either, but even with as little as three or four values, this is a much greater approximation of what the world looks like. We can all say, yeah, I get that. That's those are good values, Mitch. And you, you understand what's going on. This, however, doesn't report values in the same way.
This was a demonstration from class. This was the notan study, and then, and then the painting was started in notan. Basically, I plotted the notan structure, found out what the best composition is by a study that brought it to its irreducible shape terms. I love that term, irreducible shape terms. And then when I had that, then I went and built in the other values. And if I had continued on this, it would have been, it would have been color.
I was about to ask you, how many are thinking, oh yeah, just kind of a high contrast, it's a value study, a high contrast value study. Most, most people, even, even experienced seasoned artists, think that that's what it is. Let's address this question about, is it a value study?
This is a photograph, and then you can see the notan is generated from, uh, the photograph. So, look, we're using black and white. Is black a value? And white a value? Yes. And does not the darkest shadows in the photograph turn out to be the darkest blacks in the study? And does not the lightest lights in the photograph turn out to be the lightest areas in the study? Yes. But here's the thing, where, where go the intermediate values? The world is filled with everything in between black and white.
I have a really good example of this, a painting by a landscape painter named Mark Bonnie. He's a master at simplification. And here are two notan studies, the same painting, but two different ways to to handle the notan. Which one is better? Anybody think this one's better? Nobody thinks this one is better because good composition is universal.
And so, what, what happened? Let's assume, for the moment, he was looking out there in nature. He saw a really bright sky, really dark trees, and an intermediate path, right? So, he had to decide, how am I going to treat that path in value? I only have black, I only have white. What am I going to do with it? He decided in the not, well, should say I decided in reverse engineering his painting, to make the path light or white. And when I do that, then the whole composition is very dynamic. You can see this big diagonal energy arcing through the painting with a with a interesting shape up here and an interesting shape down there.
If I had said, "H, let me just, I think the path's pretty dark," I'll make it dark and done that, then it's just a big blob, okay? And so, this is a perfect example of how the notan study can inform you for, for things to come. So, obviously, in, in, in Mark's final painting, um, he, he didn't leave this white, but let's just, for argument's sake, say he, he did an oan study like this in his mind's eye and he said, "Yeah, I'll make this white," and that really shows me a good composition. When I get to the painting, no, I won't make it white, but I'll know that that area has to be a very distinct color, has to be defined.
Because ultimately, the notan is a shape and pattern defining tool. Yes, it uses values, but the values are just vehicles to identify shape and pattern. So, if you said, "Well, Mitch, isn't the notan partly about value?" I would say, "Yes, it is. It is, but in and of itself, that's not what its purpose is. Its purpose is shape identification and pattern identification, and it happens to use values, but it isn't only about values."
This is a painting by David DWI. He's a, he's over Gauguin, and he paints in the classical tradition, very strong value structure, strong dark, strong lights, beautiful painting. Here's the notan study of that. Now, in a case like David's, the dark shadows almost perfectly correspond to the black and the No 10, and the light areas almost perfectly correspond to the, um, sunstruck areas of, uh, the subject. However, what's happening is that what makes this a good composition isn't because he knows where to put blacks and he knows where to put whites. It's not about reading that as a dark and reading that as a light. It's reading that as a dark over here and reading that as a light over there.
As someone said earlier, it's placement. So, the composition doesn't become a composition suddenly because I assign something a light and something a dark. That makes me see the shapes, but ultimately, the composer, the compositionist, is moving those shapes around. And there's two ways to do that. I can do it by the classic framing. I can say, "I'm going to make a composition with four women." Oh, now I'm going to make a composition with five women. Now I'm going to make a composition with one woman. And I move it around. That's one way of doing it, how we frame it.
But the other way we do it is we frame it, and then we say, "Well, yeah, but that light behind her head would be a better composition if that light were bigger. Be a better composition if that dark were smaller." Think of it as every shape in the composition breathes. It breathes in, it breathes out. It has weight, it has density. And every one of them is moving and changing shape. You know, when you squeeze a balloon, one, one end expands, and you let go, and the other end contracts. Think of all the shapes in your composition as having that kind of life. And every, you know, you've heard like, it was so well composed that if I just moved one thing, it would just, it just changed it. That's how, how much integrity a good composition, um, can have.
So, yes, we start with, h, what's darkest in the composition, h, what's lightest in the composition. So, we're paying a little attention to values, but the value views are essentially a vehicle for shape definition. Does that make any sense? Okay, good.
Now, the reason I love to show this is because I brought it into class once, and I was talking about the Note 10, and, and a very astute student said, "You were just talking about the no 10 and, and black and white. What's up with this? Like, where's the not Tan in that?" And I said, "Well, I'm glad you asked." And I whipped out this very sheet of paper, and I drew this. Most of my work is not super high contrast. And so, all right, so let's say I, I found a pattern in a design and I expressed it in black and white, right? It sure didn't stay black and white when I got to the painting.
But what it, what this did inform me of was that Mitch, when you get to this painting, you must distinguish between the light yellow zones and the cool, bluer, greener zones. In other words, what is defined by value, black and white, in the notan sketch becomes defined by color relationships in the final painting. And this is the aspect of notan design that, that I feel like I've introduced to, to the discussion. Because usually, when it's discussed, it's like, "Oh, you find the values and you turn into black and white, and within that, you find, you know, a great composition." I would agree with that.
But if that, if that's all it was, then what happens to painters like me who don't paint in extremes of dark and light, who don't invoke chiaroscuro? What happens then? Is it not a useful tool? And I would say, no, it is a useful tool. And it's a useful tool if you understand that what, what the notan defines above all is shape and pattern, not value.
You know, Monet and the Impressionists were very enamored with Japanese prints. And I wonder if they knew about notan. They might have, um, and if he didn't, like, I doubt that Monet did one of these before he did this painting. But, but in his mind's eye, in terms of his awareness of composition, which was of a pretty high order, let's just imagine that, like the, like my yellow painting that I just showed you, is a similar thing going on here. He had this dissolving atmospheric subject, which would have totally fallen apart had he not had some kind of structure. And he literally used the structure of the train station to house his composition.
But the fun part, again, projecting into his mind, look at the, um, smoke coming out of the train, right? In terms of value, it's totally in this big empty hole of the train station. But in the notan, I put the smoke smoken because as a composition, it's much more interesting when this shape breaks up this big opening in the train station. And in the painting, granted, it's not a super strong moment, but he also engages the big open airy space by having the blue smoke. And there's a subtle complimentary relationship there, the blue smoke against the orange, orange background. So, again, no tan in black and white gives way to, to color relationship. So, that's how it can work for you later on. It's not about retaining the absolute black and white structure in the final analysis. It's about the black and white structure laying out a compositional pattern, and it's the pattern that you retain.