Proko - Project - Notan Master Thumbnails

193K views

lesson

video

Project - Notan Master Thumbnails

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

course

Drawing BasicsFull course (185 lessons)

$159

1 / 5

Bundle discount Each additional course part in your cart adds 3% off all courses, up to 15% off.

Full course

You’ll learn the most important foundational concepts for drawing anything and soon you’ll be drawing pictures out of your imagination or from reference.

$159

View course details

Give a gift

Give a gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store.

Or gift this course:

About instructor

Stan Prokopenko

Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.

assignments 465 submissions

A quick tip about big, medium, and small shapes. Maybe it helps someone out there.

DOWNLOADS

zip

reference-images.zip

17 MB

mp4

project-notan-master-thumbnails.mp4

250 MB

txt

project-notan-master-thumbnails-transcript-english.txt

7 kB

txt

project-notan-master-thumbnails-transcript-spanish.txt

7 kB

file

project-notan-master-thumbnails-captions-english.srt

11 kB

file

project-notan-master-thumbnails-captions-spanish.srt

12 kB

ASSIGNMENTS

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!

@dbd1000

•

Here's my assignment for level 1.

Camille Varner Kolafa

•

These look really nice!

Thomas Nolan II

•

I spent too long working on these Notan thumbnails, but the extra time did afford a better read on where to lay in the 3 values more selectively. I figure with practice, the efficiency will go up and hopefully the time duration goes down.

Camille Varner Kolafa

•

Yes, with practice you will definitely become more quick with these :) I can tell in some you got caught up in the details, so be mindful of that as well. All of your thumbnails look beautiful though, nice work!

Vanessa White

•

This is honestly harder than I imagined 😭 I struggle to identify which object I should shade, and if yes, which value. It’s a lot of “to shade or not to shade”, and seeing other students’ submissions got me saying “oh, touché (to shade)” 😂 I think I also struggle with how much details I should include, how much I should simplify. Any advice or feedback or guidance will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Camille Varner Kolafa

•

I think you've got a great start! It helps to try squinting when you look at the image, to reduce the details and force your eye to see only the big value groups. Also, you could try this value study tool that Proko has! https://www.proko.com/values

Vanessa White

•

Decided to watch the demo first after completing my first thumbnail, cause I noticed that I have the tendency of going for more than 3 values, and wanting to shade everything. Want to make sure I’m doing this right for the rest of the images.

Vanessa White

•

Just finished watching the demo video. I definitely forgot to squint my eyes and ignore the details. Working on the rest of the images while keeping these in mind!

Juan Sanchez

•

24d

Here is my submission for level 1. I feel like maybe I went too fast with a couple of these, but it was a fun project after all. Can't wait to try level 2 out.

Axel Gyllenstierna

•

30d

My level 2 submission. The difference between having a reference handed to you on a silver platter versus composing it yourself was much bigger than I anticipated. Respect to photographers. Undefined and muddy shapes makes translating values so much harder, especially with trees. I think I got them looking decent in #3, though being further away helped. As always, the key seems to be simplifying, simplifying, simplifying. Even more...

Misa

•

1mo

Here's some quick notan sketches from the project. Any feedback is welcome.

Camille Varner Kolafa

•

1mo

These look great! I think you're getting some gradient instead of solid value in #4 and a tiny bit in #3. It helps to think in shapes again for this project!

@nabilkaz

•

1mo

I'm coming back to this project after a bit of a hiatus. Choose a few Sargent paintings just to force a fresh perspective from it. Included the photos and 2- and 3-Value filters (I did this after the thumbnails and drawings). On Repose I had trouble figuring out how much of the detail to lose in the dress and tried to just use time as a forcing function (limited it to 30-45 minutes for large and around 5-10 min on the thumbnails). Would love any feedback

Camille Varner Kolafa

•

1mo

These are fantastic, I LOVE The Daughters one! Assigning the 3 values to it makes it look so spooky! I think you did a really successful job of seeing the value relationships in both. For the dress, it might help if you squint at your reference or edit it to make it blurry, that way more detail is lost so you can focus on the bigger shapes of value. I definitely see where you had trouble with the dress, specifically with those darkest values in the middle. If you make those shapes bigger, and bring the darkest value in to the right end of the couch more, I think it would help balance it a lot.

Alice Charlington

•

1mo

really enjoyed this project

Aura

•

1mo

Hello world! Finally made the time to finish these. I feel like I’ve made 800 of these, esp the Sargent painting.

Camille Varner Kolafa

•

1mo

These look lovely, I especially love the bag of tomatoes. That is a challenging object to reference for this project since the bag is so reflective and wrinkly!

Jonah Jenkins

•

1mo

Definitely a struggle, which means it was good practice 🫠 I was so worried about getting the right shape design that the values were hard to focus on as well. Perhaps more construction lines would have helped, but I was worried about putting those down to dark 😬

Rain Kipper

•

2mo

My attempt. I like shading topic...

Axel Gyllenstierna

•

2mo

Level 1 projects. Hoping to get feedback before I start/finish the level 2 versions. Main takeaway: To make focal points pop, match the exposure scale to the main subject's value: set low exposure (light-leaning cutoff thresholds) for dark subjects, and high exposure (dark-leaning cutoff thresholds) for light subjects. I only just realized this on the last studies (the Sorollas)!

Axel Gyllenstierna

•

2mo

Also, simplifying sufficiently was easily as difficult as the values...

Håkon Antonsen

•

2mo

Here's my first attempt. With 2 and 3 values. Did the one with 2 first, and there were large parts of the picture I thought should be somewhere in the middle, so I thought the version with 3 values would be much simpler. It wasn't. Apart from the woman's face looking like Ditto, I am reasonably happy with how it turned out - which I think means I don't really know what to look for. So I am looking forward to feedback.

Melanie Scearce

•

2mo

You have the right idea here, in terms of simplifying the value shapes! Your 2 value study looks good to me. The simplification to the major shapes makes sense. I think your 3 value study is overall too light. This is a mid-key painting, so the middle values dominate the composition. There's a bit too much lightest value shapes in the 3 value study to achieve the same effect at the painting. I'd encourage you to keep going with that one and fill in with more darker value shapes, see what you can come up with! Doing a few small simplified thumbnails will help you plan out a larger value study, so you might find it beneficial to experiment a bit before diving back in.

@jfd

•

2mo

Fun project. Although I had a hard time finding the right balance in terms of shape details, especially at first.

K. Williams

•

3mo

Hope I'm doing these right. Sorry about the shine!

@jonliebers

•

3mo

Tried some more with these Sargent’s

Mitchell Jackson

•

3mo

This was an interesting project. I didn't really know what to do with #11 & #13.

Hernan Rueda

•

3mo

I found this project really interesting! If someone have any advice feel free to comment.

@pablo_dispatch

•

3mo

Here's my submission. The portraits went really smoothly, while everything even a little bit landscape-y was a struggle, especially the one by Richard Schmid, just couldn't grasp the values and shapes on that one. I have a hunch that I should've gone even smaller digitally, as I tended to dive into details too much, especially with the earlier references :)