Project - Notan Master Thumbnails

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

inDrawing Basics

43K

Mark as Completed

Assignments 213

Downloads 6

Project - Notan Master Thumbnails

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

43K

Mark as Completed

Assignments 213

Downloads 6

Level 1: Two to Three Value Studies

In this project, you'll do Value Thumbnails to help you see value relationships and organize them into groups. You'll simplify the drawings into just 2 or 3 values. This practice will improve your ability to observe and interpret values in your drawings.

Thumbnails are small sketches. They are intentionally small to help you avoid drawing details. Don't draw the details! Focus on designing the large shapes and assigning them a value.

Reference

In the downloads, you’ll find several images of master paintings. Use the images I provided, and if there's another master painting you're excited about, feel free to study it as well.

Two-Value Studies

Two-value drawings (Notan) use just lights and darks. You'll choose a threshold: anything lighter goes into lights, anything darker into darks. This threshold is up to you, based on your interpretation of the image.

Lights
Darks

Three-Value Studies

Optionally, incorporate a mid value into your thumbnails. The mid value is useful for areas that aren't clearly light or dark and could belong to either group. Including this value helps to categorize those ambiguous areas.

Lights
Mids
Darks

Level 2: Still Life Photos

For more challenge, set up your own still life, compose, light, and photograph it. Use a direct and clear light source to create distinct light and dark areas. Choose a subject that interests you.

Then, do value thumbnail studies from your photo. This is harder since you're working from a photo, not a master paintings, which have a lot of the composing, designing, and simplifying already done. Photos present raw details and noise. You'll need to filter out unnecessary information, focusing on big shapes and value groups. Fight the urge to include all the details.

Remember, this project isn't about beautiful drawings. It's about improving specific skills to help you make beautiful drawings later.

Deadline - submit by Nov 15, 2024 for a chance to be in the critique video!

Thien Minh Pham

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I really need feedback on mine I do find it hard to identify the shadow and light.

Angelica

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10d

I don’t feel that confident about this but I used the value tool to check myself and it seems like I am doing alright.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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10d

The 3rd and 4th pages look especially nice

Theodor Urhed

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10d

Did the first half with HB mechanical pencil and the second batch with a wacom tablet.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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10d

I think I like the pencil ones more. They are more interesting, especially the Sargent one.

I did not Want to see that

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13d

Second attempt on the level 2 assignment. The image is a little upclose since I did not put any borders around the drawing, so I thought it looked better this way, I would love to know if there are any points of improvement here! One word of advice i'd give myself is that I kinda shot myself in the foot by going so dark with a hb pencil, if I didn't I most likely could have reduced the amount of noise in the darker areas, but I guess doing more and more of these will help with that. I also tried to do little to no detail at all and just focusing on the larger, clustered shapes, was that a good call?

Brian Judy

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13d

I love your choice of values for your composition. Came out really great

Melanie Scearce

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13d

Yes, this looks awesome!

Laurie

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16d

I haven't been drawing for a while, but trying to get back into it now. I'll do more notans (they are pretty cool!) but posting my attempt at the boats. The 3 shades looked cleaner on the paper, but in the photo I can see all the areas that were not properly filled in!

Rachel Dawn Owens

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13d

Nice start!

I did not Want to see that

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16d

my level 2 assignment. I decided to go with hatching this time, since I think that is the most satisfying way of shading, but along the way I stopped focusing on it as much as I used to, so for this level 2 assignment I just decided to go with hatching. It's not perfect, so if anyone has some tips I'd gladly take any! I also did not draw the full photo and decided to mainly focus on the skull.

Melanie Scearce

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16d

I ran this image through the value study tool (https://www.proko.com/values). It makes real easy to see the larger value shapes. That would be my main critique, is to focus on designing your shapes rather than drawing what you see for this exercise. The concept of the thumbnail sketch is to help you identify values in a composition, so it would be beneficial for you to include the entire image when you are making these thumbnails. This is a cool image to work from!

ANX804U

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19d

late af, but here we are for level 2. level 1 in critique sec.

I did not Want to see that

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19d

caught up with the most recent project! I did a 2 value one and a three value one. Any points I can improve on? Should I have been a little bit more detailed with the 3 value one perhaps? Letting me know any of my mistakes helps me out a ton, so I have a lot of gratitude for that On an unrelated note, now that I have caught up I was thinking on buying the anatomy of the human body course, figure drawing fundementals course, perhaps the new upcoming gesture course or even the figure construction one. Does anybody have any tips for me on what would be the best to buy first? I was more inclined to buy the figure drawing fundemental course or the anatomy of the human body one, but I am not sure what would be the better/wiser choice? Any advice?

Amu Noor

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14d

Overall, I think you've done a great job separating your values clearly and you have a nice balance of big, medium, and small shapes. Your shading is also very nice and clean. I think you could make these thumbnails even better if you work a little smaller (to prevent adding too much detail) and think more about big swatches of value rather than focusing on the exact contour of the shapes. So you will be thinking more about the size, value, and placement of a shape rather than what the shape itself looks like. Your shapes are nicely designed and could be even better if you added some sharper corners to them in places, so that you have a balance of straights and curves. Great job! I am no expert on anatomy or figure drawing but I have heard Stan advise to do figure drawing before anatomy, as the anatomy course assumes you already know some concepts that are covered in the figure drawing course. Hope this helps!

Carlo Julian

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21d

This was my favourite assignment of the course so far. I think I messed up a lot of the proportions and values but I'm still happy with how most of them turned out. I love the way my sheet of thumbnails looks as a whole. It's very inspiring to see how these great compositions can be boiled down to these tiny thumbnails and 3 values. This was a very valuable exercise for me.

Amu Noor

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14d

These are beautiful!

@kurono

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21d

Lv1 project. Any advice on where I’m lacking would be much appreciated.

Amu Noor

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14d

Great work! I think some of your values could be made clearer if less white of the paper showed through. If you want cleaner tone without having to spend a lot of time on it, try using the flat plane of dull pencil to get broader strokes of value that overlap each other. Hope this helps!

Jack H

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23d

L1 and L2 projects. This was quite a challenging project for me. For me, I think I struggled balancing between choosing the proper shapes and covering the small shapes with a single shade. I wonder if the size of the thumbnail was too small? I did L2 of a still-life I found online. I was pleasantly surprised at how the positive shapes and negative shapes created by the shades could actually capture the form of the fruits, even without any contours. But it still needs work. Any feedback/critique will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Rachel Dawn Owens

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23d

These look really good! You did an awesome job focusing on the big, abstract shapes of value while ignoring detail. The fruit thumbnail is my favorite because of its simplicity. It’s a solid Notan study. Here’s a couple of tips I made for other students. This is one of my favorite Proko assignments so far. I like to think about this exercise like I’m building a puzzle. Consider how they whole composition fits together to build a solid thumbnail. Overall, awesome job. Keep it up!

Amu Noor

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25d

Lvl 2 project. I used the Proko skull as reference.

Amu Noor

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25d

Lvl 1 project. This was a fun assignment but I probably got stuck on details in some of the more complex compositions and put in too many floating shapes.

Josh Fiddler

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26d

I took a couple shots of same set up with dark and light backgrounds. I wanted some complexity but in hindsight, I think early on, as a relative new-comer to this kind of thnking, simpler forms, and choosing objects with local values that can be more easily grouped together might make this a bit more straight forward. That said, it did make me have to think about how I want to group things. Top row: Dark background. The histogram in PS makes this on the edge of a mid-key/low-key image. I chose the range from objects within the reference image (3rd from left). First image in the row I chose 2 light values and one shadow. I seem to get a better sense of the objects as sitting on the board. In the second image, I chose 1 light and 2 shadow values, and it feels like the lighting is more imporant, as the objects get a bit more form. The light value may be abit too bright, taking it from the cream coloured pot. Second row is the light background reference but this time I started with a 2-value study. It feels like two values is a great place to start to help decide what the priority should be. I did 3 2-value studies. I put the second one first and the first one second by mistake. See that Row 2 Image 2 just doesn't give a clear read on the light or the objects as a whole. R2 Image 1 we get a clearer idea of what's there. And by R3 Image 1, we have a good idea of what is what. So I took that one and moved into R3 Image 2 and refined the shapes, increased my accuracy a bit, and used the mid tone as a light to give a some indication of a plane change as the form goes round the clay pots, or the top of the skull, but I also used it to separate the creamy pot from the green one as they would have lost the idea of depth, or at least that's my thinking. I did try to keep them both the lightest value, using the mid-tone to create that ring around the front pot's mouth to give it a little plane change, but it felt like too much unnecessary information. Will keep doing this as practice but I'll use some simple forms from Lane Brown's awesome set of Simple Forms reference to make it easier in practice.

Lisanne

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1mo

My submission! I took my time to do a thumbnail for each of the reference photos. I was working on a personal project (making a little comic) this month but I went back to this project every now and then. I've been taking oil paint classes since september and I've been putting this 'thumb nailing' into practice there! See the last two photos for my first oil paint portrait incl marker thumbnail. Fun to apply all the puzzle pieces of this course to my own projects :)