Composition is more of a trial an error, so try some different croppings, flip some elements, and see what you like. Also helps if you have a more solid idea of the story you're trying to depict. The more elements you introduce to your story, the more things you'll have to pull from in your painting. Here is a try. I felt most the contrast in the image was on the left side, so I put our subject on the left side so our eye would be more drawn to him. Also the landscape is guiding our eye that way as well. And the sideview of the horseman wasn't really working for me, so I stole a back view from somewhere. The sky looks pretty grey, which tells me you're filming with a yellow filter. So I decided to emphasize that a bit more, shifted the red hues in the background slightly to orange, and desaturated them a bit. Since the yellow filter kills the blue, the blue pants on the rider were bothering me, so I went with grey. I went with a more intimate cropping that contained the landscape features a bit more, but depending on story, you could choose between a more open feel vs a more claustrophobic one. There is no single right answer, though there are choices that support your story, and choices that don't, so be conscious of the choices you're making and for every choice, ask yourself if it's helping or hurting the story, and you'll have to be somewhat critical and inquisitive to find the better choices. Edit: And after I posted, I realized I created a tangent with the hat and the landscape... don't do that.

The farthest mountain is much more saturated, which makes the piece unrealistic. It should lose saturation as you move farther away, and at that distance, it should be more blue due to atmospheric perspective. I think the composition is fine, but the sky is wasted space. I would find some interesting looking clouds that subtly point to the direction he’s looking at. I also feel like the horse should face a little more forward, not at perfect profile to the viewer. He’s just facing the dead end rock right now. 😆

I find it helpful to use a mid value grey and a black copic marker. If you work with these you will be restricted to three values (third being the white of the paper). Use the broad tip to help avoid noodling and to focus on big shapes.

Hi, congrats for your first studies. They are the most difficult ones. Later you will get used to it and you will bocome bolder in your decisions. I think you did a nice job. It seems that you are really trying to find the main masses. As Ron said try to avoid shading, it distracts you from the exercise. Also, I would work more on the silhouettes shapes. Take your time to try make them read the best you can or make them interesting. You work your design skills that way. I hope it helps =D

Hey a while ago I also did a notan study of the first picture you shared. Maybe comparing them helps you, mine is of course also not perfect and everyone makes different decisions when doing notans. (I added 2 tones later, which is not needed at first). I think you are already making pretty good decisions and you are consistent with them. I would recommend to you to really just use 2 tones and to dont fall in the trap with pencil to shade / use more tones in the initial notan (mainly i see this in the first study). Also it think proportion can be pretty important in notans bc you can change the composition dramatically by changing the proportions of the pictures. (I see as a problem in your fourth study) Additionally I heavily recommend Sinix' video about value distillation which are pretty much notan studies:(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwRa5qTnr8o&ab_channel=SinixDesign)

I think you could do both. But I would start with very small sketches, just do get the feeling and be able to do many of them.

Hi @Matthew Alexander, the basic procedure of these Notan Master Studies is to try to simplify a painting into big abstract shapes of black and white. It is recommended that you redraw each of your studies instead of tracing over it because this will help to keep your eye for draftsmanship fairly sharp. When you first do these studies the exercise is going to be about analyzing the image and distilling it into it's most important parts. You're going to run into a lot of situations where it isn't clear cut whether 'this part should be black' or 'this part should be white', and when you run into these situations you just want to ask yourself what the image is really about, and THAT should inform your breakdown. Try to notice the focal areas of the original image and make sure your graphic breakdown retains focus in those same areas. If you ever give some of these a shot, feel free to post them! I love doing composition studies so I'd be happy to give some pointers if there are any specific areas that you end of struggling with. Hope this helps!