Project - Notan Master Thumbnails

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

inDrawing Basics

578

Assignments 157

Downloads 6

Project - Notan Master Thumbnails

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

578

Assignments 157

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!

Thieum

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Notan Thumbnail studies of N C Wyeth painting and of a still life picture

Nicole Guz

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16h

These are really fun. But I struggle to understand the value or lesson i should get out of it? Is it to attune the eyes to simpler values?

@fischei

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It was quite challenging to these. Also in pencil it takes a lot of patience and time...to find the difference between light shadow and dark light I think I could not find most of the time. Sometimes I tried to decide in favour of a better readable image.

@fischei

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seeing them now in these small scale in the comment section, I like them a little bit more.

sara keyes

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Vue Thao

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Here's my assignment.

@mariabygrove

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Your shapes have a lovely organic look!

Juice

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Here is my level 1 and 2. This was fun!

Rachel Dawn Owens

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These are great! You did a good job simplifying the master paintings and the still life is lovely. I think that the still life could be simplified a little more for this. It’s ok to let some of the less important details fall away. Notice how I blended the candle stick into the shapes around it. I want to keep the focus on the pumpkins, so I placed the most detail on those. This is a really fun assignment. Keep it up!

Juice

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When I see others work I see I could have simplified shapes more I didn’t think much on that.

Patrick Hynes

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Level 1 three value studies:

Juice

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Looks very good. The boat one has 4 values though.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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Perfect!

@nelo

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Hi, I hope you are having a good day. It was a challenging project that dragged me into past lessons, especially the shape unit. Also, I found it more difficult to simplify the paintings with people in them than the environment ones, but despite all, I have lots of fun doing this project. For one of the thumbnails, I used a paint from the master Dragan Bibin; his work has deep darks that gives me this feeling of fear and danger of the darkness.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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These look great!

Ihori Kobayashi

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This assignment was fun and a good opportunity to study master's paintings. I used 3 values in all three practices. Sorolla's painting was most difficult because the background colors confused me and made it difficult to categorize them into the three values.

Gannon Beck

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A few notan sketches. I've done some of these before, but usually I used movie stills, not paintings. Working through these three, I could really see how the painters were using values to solve readability problems. And Dean Cornwell--holy crap--just absolutely brilliant. The way he used the clock and the molding to frame the standing characters head is deft. The scene looks like a snapshot, but everything in it is thoughtfully placed.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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Great work!!

Mike See

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Level 2:

Mon Barker

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Well, master tonal studies went fine…then I tried my own still life (my amateur analogue photography set-up)….I thought the composition was ok, but end result in terms of lit forms was just UGLY in comparison with the master paintings! Depressing how masterful they were….the Native American on horseback painting blew me away 😭

Fabian Ayala

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I tried it at first using the brush tool and midway switched to the lasso tool. I had trouble picking out the proper values to simplify the painting. I was trying to get the face values on but it looked off so I just kept it simple. Any tips would be nice. Thank you.

@christiane

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Finally an assignment in time for critique … It was fun and very useful because I tend to get lost in details. Thinking in forms and values helped. I did one in pencil and the other one in brush pen to get clear values.

@soulnaes

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Started with 2 values, then multiple 3 values with different break points.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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These are awesome studies!

Niklas Nilsson

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First attempts! Very hard to keep the values few and clear. 😤

@maldestro

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I hope i'm still in time for the sumbmission, I'm really late for this, in the next days i'll try to do more of this Thumbnails

Pedro Branco

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Completely slept on this one. I wanted to do all of the thumbnails but it flew right by me. Here's the only one that I managed, it's rushed but I think it came out ok.