Nearly-Notan Gouache with Yellow Underpainting

I ask Jeanette if she wants me to help her in the supermarket, and she says, "Really, I'd rather not. Why don't you go do a sketch?" I know what she means. I'm always distracting her with other topics while she's thinking about food.

Behind the VW Dealership, gouache, 5 x 8 inches

I've got 45 minutes and two tubes of gouache, white and black. That's OK, because I'm in a film-noir mood today. I walk over to the edge of the supermarket parking lot and there is a white van parked behind the VW dealership. I like the way it's halfway in the light.

The sketchbook page is already primed with a bright yellow acryla gouache underpainting. I did that to cover up a flubbed diner sketch (can you see the outline of a ketchup bottle just to the left of the van?). 

Over that dry priming, I draw some perspective guidelines with watercolor pencil. The "acryla" part of acryla gouache seals the surface against later wet layers of regular gouache, so the yellow won't pick up with what comes next. 

I like the bright yellow because it forces me to use opaques, and it makes me paint across edges. I lay down the big masses of near-white and near-black tones, using a flat half-inch brush, with no attempt at detail yet.

I'm interpreting the scene as a "Nearly-Notan" statement. By that I mean two families of tone: "very-dark-plus-black" for what is in shadow, and very-light-plus-white" for what is in direct sun.

I can allow myself a little definition within each of those principalities, but I want to avoid middle tones. There should be a deep valley in the middle of Histogramland.

I move to smaller brushes for details. A guy comes out on break and sits to the left of the van to check his cellphone. The sun goes behind clouds for the whole rest of the session, so I have to remember the lighting.

Jeanette has finished the grocery shopping. I've got to wrap. I use black watercolor pencil for the wires. 

I'm nearly done, but I want to add a little more glare to the sky. I add a little white artist's chalk in the area adjoining the sky and rub it in with a soft cotton cloth. If you scroll back up to the top, you can see the subtle glare effect with the chalk.

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Acryla gouache (this is like regular gouache, with some acrylic medium)

Regular gouache for the black and white

Watercolor sketchbook
White artists' chalk
Water soluble colored pencil — for this one just black

One-Minute Notan

Here's a challenging exercise for practicing brushwork: Try to paint a scene or object within one minute, interpreting it in a notan design, using black gouache and a big brush. 

A minute goes by very fast, as you can see in the video. (Link to video on Facebook)

Not only is there no undo button, but also there's no time for hesitation, and you have to use a brush fully loaded. Materials used: smooth bristol board cut into a 5-inch square, black gouache, synthetic round brush size 12.
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Why Should I Mass Values?

After yesterday's post, Ca.Via.seattle asks: "WHY is value massing so important? I’ve read your entire blog, including everything about shape welding, read Arthur Wesley Dow’s book on notan studies, and have generally scoured the internet, so I know HOW to mass values, but still don’t have a deep understanding as to why it is so important and powerful. Can you possibly elaborate?"

Howard Pyle

Good question. The reason value massing is so important is that a simple tonal design has much more impact. You can tell at a glance what's going on, and it reads from across the room or when reduced to a tiny size.

The parts of the scene that are less important can be relegated to the light-on-light mass or the dark-on-dark mass. The parts that you want the viewer to notice are highly contrasting.

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret

Here the wedding dress connects to the tablecloth and the female figures behind, while the people dressed in dark clothes join together to make a simple shape. 

Here's the YouTube video demonstrating value grouping. (Link to YouTube)

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Previously: Shape Welding
Plein-Air Tip: Grouping Tonal Values
Books: Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color
Composition tips in: Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist

Sketching in Low Light Conditions

Sketching with an LED hat

Madill Studio asks:
"Hi, James: Speaking of low-light conditions, do you have any observational tips on how to check values in such conditions (think low-lit cafe or similar). Also curious if I get a battery operated lamp for night sketching, what would be a good lumens range?"

You're right. When you're sketching in ultra low light conditions without a light of your own, it's hard to judge values accurately. It's even harder to evaluate subtle color variations.

It's also very challenging if the relative level of illumination varies a lot between the subject and your work. This is a common problem when sketching in a theatrical performance. Your eyes take a while to adjust from the bright stage to the dark sketchbook.

Lecturer sketched in dim light
with a brush pen.

If you're in a place where you can't use a light, here are some tips:
1. Shift to monochromatic colors. You can use black and white or two colors you're familiar with.
2. You can do a "notan" sketch and avoid halftones altogether, using a brush pen.

There are adjustable book lights such as the Lemonbest booklight (200 lm or 450 lumens). Book lights clip to your work and they stay stable.

For a brighter light, there's the Zebralight headlamp, which is good if you need more light outdoors.

I did these shapewelding sketches in a dark concert setting. Light shapes go to white and are grouped with other light shapes. Dark shapes weld together.

I painted these oil sketches after the sun had just set. There was still enough ambient light to see the colors on the palette and the painting.

LED hats illuminate your field of view, but they might be distracting to other people in indoor conditions. You can also get a Light unit with 5 LEDs that clips to the brim of your hat, in case you like to change hats.

Linking Darks

It's a design strategy you've probably heard of before, but it bears repeating:

If you link together your little dark shapes into bigger units, you can simplify your value organization and give your composition more impact.

Stanhope Forbes The Seine Boat

This is not as easy as it sounds, and it takes deliberate effort to do it. Note how Forbes doesn't use too many values when rendering the dark garments and the net. By keeping them flat and nearly uniformly dark, they join together to frame the important light shapes.

Edward Simmons Old Woman Peeling an Orange

Simmons connects the woman's dark shawl to the door and the wall behind her, giving her head and hands more importance. I sometimes call this "shapewelding," and others have called it "notan" or "massing." It was an idea that was current in academic painting and illustration between about 1880 and 1920.

John Singer Sargent Padre Sebastiano

Sargent links the hat to the coat on the bed at left and the priest's shirt to the garments and other dark shapes behind him. He also unifies the white papers to the sheets on the bed. Then he takes it a step further and concentrates an oval of illumination in the center of the composition.

This concentration of light brings attention to his face, and raises our awareness that he is gazing out of a window behind us, where, judging from the plants on the desk, there must be a garden. These design choices give psychological power to the portrait: Am I reading into it, or does it make him seem embedded, ensconced in his cloistered cell, reflecting on his inner and outer life? Sargent didn't find this composition, he made it.

All of these paintings are nearly monochromatic; you could copy them with black, white, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna....Except for that wonderful little dash of blue in the Forbes.
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"Shapewelding" is one of the compositional devices mentioned in my book Imaginative Realism. If you order a copy from me today, you can get it signed and shipped tomorrow. It's also available unsigned at Amazon. 

How Many Values?

Matthieu asks: "I know that value grouping is a technique you often use when sketching. How many values do you usually prefer? I have been experimenting with four values lately (white, black, bright and dark). But that is so few it is a challenge in itself..."

Matthieu, for this exercise to be useful, the fewer values the better. As Howard Pyle said, "The fewer tones the simpler and better your pictures." As an exercise, try limiting it to two or three tones. You can do that by using markers or gouache, or by premixing pools of color in oil.

Dean Cornwell

Sometimes it helps to think of families of values: a light family (with some variation in the tones) and a dark family (very much darker than any in the light family, but still distinguishable from each other). 

Those big families of tone don't have to be close to white or black, by the way. The poetry of the Cornwell moonlight scene comes from handling those "whites" as a family of mid-range cool tones and saving the highest values for those sparkling windows.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it's not just how many values you have in your design, but how they're arranged. 

Travels of the Soul by Howard Pyle

In the painting above, Pyle has basically set up a light family and a dark family and has gradated between them.  The impact of the design comes from that powerful grouping of the lights together into a single mass and the grouping of darks into a mysterious shadow.

Pyle told his students: "Put your white against white, middle tones (groups) against grays, black against black, then black and white where you want the center of interest. This sounds simple, but it is difficult to do."

John Singer Sargent, Two Girls Fishing, 1912, Cincinnati Art Museum

These ideas were in the air when Pyle and Cornwell were working. Many other leading artists, such as John Singer Sargent were always grouping tones in arresting and memorable ways. If you check out any of the posts linked below, you can see more examples.

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Previous related posts:

Shapewelding

Linking Darks

Breadth

Shapewelding Sketching

'What About that Rule?'
Posts that mention "Notan"
My other channels:
Instagram @jamesgurneyart
Facebook 
Twitter
YouTube

Sketchbook Report in IA92

My full 'Sketchbook Report' from the Portrait Society Conference has just been published in the August/ September issue of International Artist magazine. 

The issue also has Matthew Innis's detailed coverage and photos from the same event, plus "The Power of Notan" by Mitchell Albala, and "Foundational Truths" by Roger Dale Brown. 

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Portrait Society of America

International Artist magazine issue 92 coming soon to your newsstand.

Previously: GJ poll results of favorite art magazines 

Grisaille with Warm Underpainting

I painted this creamer yesterday while waiting for my scrambled eggs. 

Creamer, gouache 3 x 3 inches

It's in black and white gouache, painted over a yellow-ochre square patch that served as an underpainting. I allowed the underpainting to shine through here and there. I painted that patch a few weeks ago. 

Sometimes it's nice to use paint that gives you a sealed or closed surface (that is, it won't reactivate if it gets rewet). On the lower left corner, I rubbed off the gouache paint with a damp rag to reveal the underpainting. 

I could have used acrylic or acryla gouache for the underpainting, but in this case, I used casein for the yellow square. 

Here's a very brief video with the voice of the diner's owner. If you're getting this post by email, you might need to follow this link to see the video.
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Related previous posts:
Creamer in Casein
Transparency and Reflections (Creamer in Gouache)
Still Life in a Diner Booth
Nearly-Notan Gouache with Yellow Underpainting (VW Deakership)

Hard and Soft Light

What is meant by hard and soft light?

Hardness or softness refers to how large the primary light source appears to be from the point of view of the subject. A hard light comes from a small, sharp source. Even though the sun itself is a very large object, it’s a relatively hard source of light because the disc of the sun appears small in the sky. A streetlight or a theater spotlight is also a hard source. Think of a hard light source as one that you could completely cover up with your thumb held at arm’s length. A medium-hard light is one that you could cover up with the width of your palm.

Soft light, on the other hand, shines out from a wide area, as seen from the subject’s point of view. This could be a fluorescent light, a north-facing window, or an overcast sky. A soft source is any light that appears larger than a piece of office paper held at arm’s length.

A plaster écorché in hard light (left) and soft light (right) 

Effects of hard and soft light
Any given light source becomes harder as it moves farther back from the subject and gets progressively smaller from the subject’s perspective.

These two photos of an écorché head demonstrate the effects of hard and soft light outdoors at midday. At left, direct sunlight coming from above and to the right illuminates the head. Note the clear division between light and shadow, the crisp edge of the cast shadow projected by the nose onto the chest, and the pocket of shadow in the eye socket.

At right, the same head is lit by a soft light positioned directly above. With the direct sunlight diffused, there’s no clear division of light and shadow, and no definite edge to the cast shadows. Instead, the darkest tones appear in the hollows and the down-facing planes.

Soft light: "Waiting at the Window" from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara by James Gurney

In soft light, planes tend to get lighter as they face upward since they receive more and more of the diffused light from above. In the case of this photo, the light is diffused by a large white piece of fabric, but it would be the same effect if the sky were covered with a thin layer of clouds.

Hard light: 15 minute figure study in oil by James Gurney

Hard light is more directional and dramatic, but it can also be harsh and unflattering. Highlights are more pronounced. It casts crisper shadows and it brings out more surface texture, especially in the region of the half light, where light turns to shadow.

Soft light is generally more suited to portraiture because it shows fewer wrinkles. Because there are no sharp-edged cast shadows, the overall effect is simpler. Tonal transitions from light to shade are more gradual in soft light compared to hard light. 

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For the complete article, with additional illustrations and more info, including how to set up your lights to get hard and soft light, pick up a copy of the current issue of International Artist magazine, voted the #1 art magazine by GurneyJourney readers. The issue also has an article by Mitchell Albala on notan and a call for entries for a contest about seascapes, rivers, and lakes.

For more on light, you can get my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter signed from me or from Amazon.

Cure for Middle Value Mumbling

If your work suffers from “middle value mumbling,*” here’s a cure.

1. Bring your sketchbook to a restaurant, bus station, lecture hall, or waiting room.

2. Draw the scene very lightly in pencil, just to work out the shapes. You’ll erase these lines later.

3. Choose a drawing tool that only makes black shapes, such as a wide calligraphy marker or a water brush filled with black ink.

4. Define all the shapes as either white or black. If the scene is strongly lit, you can make the shadows totally black and the light areas white.


5. There are two rules:
    a. DON’T DRAW OUTLINES. Let one black area run into another. Let white areas merge together. Resist the temptation to draw boundaries. You can see I started to forget this rule and outlined the top of the head and the base of the stool at right.

   b. The other rule is DON’T DRAW MIDDLE TONES. This is hard to do. I desperately wanted to put in halftones and transitions in the man’s back.

5. Now erase the pencil lines. The result will probably look nothing like other drawings you’ve done. It might have a startling realism.

The viewer will have no trouble understanding the scene. The mystery can work very much in your favor. It’s excellent practice if you’re learning to paint, because these grouping decisions are a key to good tonal composition.


It’s also wonderful for giving your work more punch or more mystery. Dean Cornwell (above) in his early career was very interested in this kind of thinking.

*Middle value mumbling is the common tendency to mix all your colors in midrange tones, rather than pushing them to either the light or the dark. We all fall into this problem. It takes conscious effort to avoid it.

Previously on GurneyJourney:
Krøyer's Hip Hip Hurra
 High Contrast Shape Welding
“Shape Welding”
Concert Sketching


Related concept called "notan" explained at Empty Easel.com