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!

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.