Transcription
Hey, welcome to my channel. Today, I'm going to be demonstrating how to do a no-tan study in a sketchbook to help improve the design and composition of your paintings.
So, here's the reference photo I'm going to be working with today. It's a view of the Embarcadero by the bay in San Francisco. And if you haven't heard of a no-tan study before, the idea is that you just take an image and then you break it down into black and white shapes. And the really nice thing about no-tan is that it, I think it's a great way to study design and composition of our paintings because we're only focusing on light and dark shapes. We really focus on the overall design of the painting rather than getting lost in all the individual details. So, it's a great practice in simplification and also in understanding and sort of seeing the big picture of whatever we seek to paint.
So, what I do for this no-tan, I'm painting it in my sketchbook and I'm working really small. So, I have a pocket-size sketchbook and I think it's great to do these on a really small scale because then it really forces you to focus on the overall large shapes and not get lost in the small details. I'm painting this using acrylic gouache. So, I usually paint most of my studio paintings in oils, but for these sketches, I like to use acrylic gouache because it dries quickly and it's easy to layer.
And so, here you can see I'm just using black and white paint. And I start by going in with the outlines of all of the shapes that I'm seeing, all of all of the the dark shapes that I'm seeing in the image. I'm looking at my reference photo and I'm squinting and I'm trying to categorize shapes into dark and light. And here, I think, is where a lot of the subjectivity comes into play because, of course, when we look at the image, none of the shapes are purely black or white. All the shade types are somewhere in between. And so, as artists, we get to make the decision: what do we want to, what do we want to group as the dark shapes and what do we want to group as the light shapes? And I think by forcing us to make this decision, we, it brings a lot of clarity into our work and into the overall design of the painting.
As I'm squinting, I'm trying to establish what are the overall dark shapes that I'm seeing and what are the shapes that that are light. The dark shapes that really pop out to me are the palm trees. They're getting hit by the sunlight, but they're actually, they're sort of backlit. They're mostly in shadow. So, I'm going to group all of the palm trees into these dark shapes that sort of merge together. If I squint my eyes, I don't actually see the individual palm trees, but instead, I sort of see these large black blobs that that all sort of merge as the palm trees go into the distance.
Another dark shape that I'm seeing, or some other dark shapes that I see, are the parts of the buildings that are in shadows. So, some parts of the buildings are getting hit by direct light, but then other parts of the buildings are in shadow. So, I'm going to group those into the dark shapes. Other dark shapes that I'm seeing are the lamp posts. So, those will also be part of the dark part of my composition. And then the shapes that I'm seeing in light are the shapes of the sky, the parts of the sky that you can see in between the palm trees, and also the street that's getting hit by this bright, direct sunlight.
And here, I'm trying to focus on the major strong shapes that I'm seeing. So, I'm squinting my eyes a lot. And some of the smaller details like windows in the buildings or things that are on the sidewalk or things that are far in the distance, all of those start to merge into either the light shapes or shadow shapes. So, I'm not going super into detail, but I'm simplifying a lot of those details away and just focusing on what are the major shapes that I'm seeing.
Once I've established the main dark shapes, then I go in with the white paint and start to refine. So, when I'm putting in the dark shapes, I'm not being incredibly precise. I'm trying to work really quickly and just get the overall impression of the dark shapes that I'm seeing. And then I can go in with the lighter paint and start to sort of refine these shapes and carve into the dark shapes with the light paint. So, I like to, I sort of do this as like an iterative process where I lay the dark shapes in first, and then I refine when I add in the white paint, and then I can go back and add more dark paint and go like back and forth, continuing to refine the shapes that I'm seeing until I'm happy with the overall composition.
But even at this stage, we can already get a sense of the overall composition of the image. And I think it's incredible that even though we're, we're just using these darker shapes to show the form and to design the painting, we can still recognize that this is a city scene. We can still see the curving of the streets and get a sense of these palm trees that are disappearing into the distance. And so, I think that doing these no-tan exercises is a great exercise in simplification and showing us just how, how much detail we can leave out and still communicate the feeling of an image or a scene.
But still, the no-tan is very rough at this stage. And if you like, you could leave it very simplified because I think here, I mean, I'm, I'm still able to capture the overall design of the painting. But I want to go in and refine some of these details and get a better sense of how the overall shapes might look if I brought this to a final painting in the studio.
As a side note, you can also do no-tans with just a pencil or a pen. But one of the reasons why I like to do them with the brush is that I think when you're working with a brush, it encourages you to think in terms of broad shapes rather than fine lines and details. So, using the brush, and especially using a large brush relative to your surface, is really going to help you simplify things into the bigger shapes.
As I'm filling in the white paint, I'm reevaluating the shapes that I initially laid down with the darker paint. And I'm moving some things. I'm checking if I like the placement of different lines, if I like the weight of the lines that I've added, or if I want to lighten things. And in some cases, I, I just erase some of the lines that I don't think are working or adding much value to the image. So, as I'm working, I'm just constantly reevaluating: how does the image feel with the lines this way? How does the image feel with the current composition that I have created? And I'm not just adding in white, but I'm also correcting things and adjusting things to make the image more to my liking.
In some parts of the image, I find that I've added too much detail and I can simplify more. And in other parts of the image, I find that I maybe want to add a bit more detail and break up some of the dark shapes that I created earlier. For example, when I was adding in the palm trees, I realized that with the black paint, they were a little too large. And so, with the white paint, I can start to carve away their shape a little bit, make them a bit smaller, and also distinguish them a bit more from each other so that it's not just one large black blob. For now, I'm trying to get just the overall round shape of the palm fronds, but later, I'll go in and add a bit, a bit of sort of cutouts or sky holes to the palm trees that suggest the the sharp shape of the fronds. And this is one of the really nice things about sketching with acrylic gouache because it's just so easy to go back and correct certain areas. The dark paint is already pretty much dry, and it's only been a few minutes.
I also realized that the trees in the background, their shapes were a little too large, and I want to give that sense of perspective of the trees, you know, getting smaller as they disappear into the distance. So, I refine the shapes of those trees further back to to create that that sense of linear perspective.
Another thing that I'm paying attention to while I'm working on this no-tan is if I have any shapes that appear really repetitive. I think that repetitive shapes can be boring, or at least in my artwork, I don't like to have too much repetition. So, when I'm doing this no-tan, I'm looking for: are there any shapes that look really uniform? For example, in the trunks of the palm trees, I don't want the spacing between them to look exactly the same. And so, that's something that I keep in mind when I'm doing the no-tan. And it's really nice when we simplify things into light and dark shapes, it becomes much easier to identify things like this in our painting.
Next, I turn to adding some detail to the palm trees. And here, I am trying to add as little detail as possible while still suggesting the shape of the palm trees. I think it's very easy to want to make them very jagged and to draw out every single frond. But the beauty of painting is that we can simplify reality and we can suggest the shape of things without drawing out every last detail. And if you notice when you squint at the reference image, or when you, when you look at it in a small thumbnail, actually, the overall shape of the palm trees are pretty round, and you don't actually see every individual frond. So, here with this no-tan study, I'm adding just a few details to suggest the fronds without drawing out every single one.
When it comes to adding detail, I think there's just a really delicate balance that we need to strike, and it's something that I think about a lot when I'm doing these studies. After I've added the white paint to the no-tan study, I noticed some areas where I added a little too much, and I want to now go back in with the black paint to refine those areas. I use the black paint to add back some shadows of the buildings that are further in the distance. I also refine some of the lines of the curves of the street, which had become really thin after I added the layer of white. You'll notice that I've somewhat exaggerated the contrast of the curb compared to the reference photo, and the reason for this is because I thought it was a really nice design element that helps move the eye around the image. I also redefined some of the details on the lamp posts that were lost when I added the white paint.
Next, I turned to the palm trees. When I added in some of the sky holes to the palm trees, I realized that I cut a bit too much into the shapes, and I was losing the overall roundness of the palm trees. So, I go and add some more black paint to bring that roundness back, to give the shape a more cohesive, round structure. I also add some dark fronds sticking up into the sky for the palm trees that are more in the background. I try to keep them really simple and keep the overall shapes just more round, dark blobs. I don't want to give too much detail to those palm trees or make them too distracting. I want the main focus to be the foreground shapes, so I keep the background shapes relatively simple.
After refining some more of the shadow shapes and and adding a few more details, I'm pretty much done with the study. So, here's how it turned out in the end, and you can see that we've arrived at a much more simplified version of the reference photo. I hope through this study, I demonstrated how we can convey so much information even when just using black and white. And as I mentioned before, this whole process is really subjective. So, you may look at the same image as me, but simplify it in a different way. It's all about practicing breaking an image into abstract shapes to convey how you see the world.
Anyway, thanks so much for watching. I really hope you like this video. Let me know what you thought of this video in the comments below, and be sure to tell me if you've done your own no-tan studies. And as a quick note, this video isn't sponsored by anyone, but you can support my work by purchasing my paintings at my website below, by joining my Patreon, or by sharing this video with a friend. All of these things really help me out. And as always, a huge shout out to my supporters on Patreon. Thank you guys so much for making these videos happen. Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next time.