You pack so much information into your videos. I feel like I don’t need to look elsewhere, it’s all here in your great library of instructional videos. Thank you Dianne for your generous sharing of your years of experience.
i dont mean to be offtopic but does anybody know of a method to log back into an instagram account?? I somehow lost my password. I would appreciate any help you can give me
I am so delighted to discovered Dianne Mize! I never learned art theory, although I have been painting over 50 years as an amateur. I have never heard of a Notan, so this is just amazing to me.
Thank you! I learned a lot. I am not good with shadows and the way you started the painting is so awesome. I will definitely use this and continue to watch your videos.
Thanks for your generosity in sharing these videos Dianne. It's so lovely to see someone focusing on composition, colour, and technique. As a beginner it's so helpful, much more so than watching a professional do a completed painting and wondering "how on earth did they do that???". There's so much that goes on underneath the surface of their brains and it's great to learn about it! Hi from Australia 😁
Thank you so much. You have broaden my art technique by a light year. You explain very well and I've learn to look at painting not as pictures but areas of light and shadow something I had a hard time comprehending. Tks
I'm delighted. What I've discovered is that when we switch our attention to the light and shadow and what's happening within those areas in shadow and not in shadow, we begin to see other things, too, that otherwise we might not have noticed.
I’m also wanting to start from the beginning. Makes total sense. And in trying to figure out how to order DVDs by the whole series. Im directed to Amazon. But my Amazon site doesn’t have a series whole set. I get directed to the world series Haaaha. So still will do QTs and keep trying for a set of lessons from the earliest time. 😄
I never heard the term Notan either until tonight, but understood the value lessons you’re teaching. I loved the outcome, it was interesting to watch how it began then came together. I just found you tonight, trying to start again painting after many years of not, and couldn’t recall a proper way to add clouds to an image I had painted without a background of the sky...which I don’t think I’ll ever do that again, lesson learned. But seeing how many lessons you have here, I am very eager to get comfy and do some learning, again! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and talent with those needing help!
Thanks, Lisa. My purpose for these is to help fill in the gaps and give clarity to issues people don't understand. Enjoy your rediscovering journey with painting!
Wow, this was a great lesson on NoTan. I was hoping someone would actually show a step by step guide when using NoTan as they paint. This lesson has improved my painting to a higher level. It helped me to break down a picture by shadow and build upon shadows. I did before but knowing the theory of what I was doing make me understand what and why I was doing which in turn made it easier to break down the picture before painting it. The shadow board you created has helped me to organize my shadowing too! Thank you for a job well done! I look forward to learning more from you.
Thanks, Dianne. I'm new to this since I just picked up my brushes after a forty year lull. Am enjoying it so much. Your explanations of Notan were extremely helpful.
Just amazing, I am becoming addicted to watching and listening to you, learning all time. Thank you so much for sharing your great expertise and experience.
Great Video Dianne. You are truly amazing. I have watched some of your videos but now I will go back to the beginning. Thanks so much for what you do to help others with your knowledge and wisdom. Blessings and be safe.
Miss Diane, You are certainly, a master teacher! What you teach about in words, you make come alive in demonstration. That is what teaching is all about ! Thank you very kindly, Jimi
Part of the classical french school was to paint colour studies ( les ebauches )before an etude (scaled down version of the final pic ) to sort out any final problems before doing the final work. Thumbnail _sketch_color study_ etude_final work. So, notan fits quite nicely into this scheme. Preparing for your final presentation ,helps you save a lot of time and paint and frustration by doing these preliminary exercises.
I watched this 3 or so years ago. Loved it then and even more now because this time I observed your brush work and methods of paint application. I was reminded how important Notan and composition are to the foundation of any work. Ultimately we are responsible for our own limits we put on ourselves. Thank you again Dianne.....
I loved this lesson. Dianne made so much sense to do this technique. I loved her comment on not making a copy of the photo, that she is not a camera, that art is meant to be a representation of the photo.... thank you so much for this lesson. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
+Tracey Lowe - nee Menzies Thank you, Tracey. Dianne and I have talked about the fact that if you want it to look like a photo to just take a photograph. She feels that the final painting should come from within. Roger SauteeLive.com
As I paint every day putting my efforts to make my painting better. 'no 10' is new addition to my knowledge, though I do under painting technique but I could understand it better. Thankyou so much ❤️
The color and value accuracy that you've achieved by the end is really impressive. When I squint and compare the photo and the painting, the two really do have a profound likeness. What a fine video. Thanks so much for the lesson!
I Agree with the previous comment. What a wonderful teacher and artist you are. I am so grateful for the kindness you have shown by sharing your knowledge.
This is the very best tutorial of Artwork I have come across , being a lifelong artist in the industrial world, at 60 I’m just now starting to put it on canvas, on every surface I can find. Thank You so very much for being a Teacher with patience and meaningful dialogue.
Dear Dianne, this is sooo educational. I never come up with that myself. You opened a very important door for many...you have opened my eyes in any case and i always thank you for that.You are the best learning experience in my eyes. Thank you so much for sharing everyting and God bless...
I am truly , honestly amazed at your videos. After watching a few of your later videos, where I have learned things about neutrals and brushes and etc, ( I have never heard before! ) I decided to start at Tip 1. and go thru one by one. I am telling every home learned artist I know about your videos. These tips are mind blowing to me. I have been sketching for years but most of my paintings never looked right. I would repaint over the canvas or scrap them. Now after watching a small few of your videos, I understand why. Like I said, I am amazed! You are amazing! Thank you and You Tube for these videos.
“My purpose for doing these is to make art theory come alive…to be more expressive in our work…”. I have been watching your videos practically non-stop since I found your channel a few days ago while I go about my daily routine. In my opinion, you consistently accomplish exactly that with each and every video. I have not picked up a brush in 3 years because I’ve had to downsize and move so many times. Now I’m finally settled and am totally energized. Over the past few days my studio is organized, paint brushes and paint tubes cleaned (thanks for that quick tip). I love your common sense, the tips you share that demonstrate your understanding that a lot of people are on tight budgets, your smile laugh and sense of humour. Your students must have loved you. I loved my job as much as you must have loved yours and I’m so grateful to have a hobby (one of a few but my absolute favourite) that brings so much joy and makes every day an exciting one. I had two mentors along the way but most of what I’ve learned has been through trial and error. In the past few days I have learned and finally assimilated so many concepts that I’ve struggled with since I first picked up a brush. That’s all on you❤️. Thanks
Thank you for all the illuminating videos. As an experiment I took a screengrab of your example painting from the beginning. I then saved it as a 2 color gif with photoshop. It was very similar to your NoTan study!
You actually cover subjects that nobody else is talking about I’ve never heard of no tan but I’ve always been her to work your darks in first worked from dark to light for values. Very fascinating thank you for the video
Thank you for sharing these relevant informational videos. I learn so much every time. I will try and buy the books recommend in your tutorial. Hopefully I will create paintings that other people will appreciate.
I’m so happy to have discovered your channel. You remind me so much of my first art teacher who died 2 years ago. I’m excited to work my way through your content.
mwill6611 Thanks, mwill6611. This video is online at three different locations and has proven to be very popular. Our goal is to provide clear and concise information to the art world in an unpretentious manner. - Roger (producer at SauteeLive)
Yes you certainly make art come to life in the form of your wonderful personality in paint 🎨 to express yourself in paint and not be a camera 📸 is very true, i do not want to be a camera either🙂🌸💐thanks again💕
That demo was beyond the call of duty for a free tip...but thank you so much. Watching an orderly progression for painting is a lesson that I could have used several years ago when I first took up this painting process. (I was long in the tooth...but a strong desire to learn and achieve)
As a watercolour beginner I struggled so much with values and shadows. So I used to use my image editing software to accentuate the shadow areas in monochrome and that's how I painted my reference images. I never knew until today that this is something artists are used to! :-) I feel like I'm in the right path, for the first time in my life. About something.
Thank you very much you have been more help then anyone iv seen on RU-vid iv been asking god to show me someone who could texh me how to paint a picture thanks
I have an artist friend who had a stroke affecting his vision. Now he can only see in black and white with no depth perception. I can't begin to imagine what that is like. Thanks to you I ordered a copy of Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design. As he liked to paint with angles and shapes I think this book will help energize him into painting again.
Wowwwww Thank you so very much...I have a better understanding about the princples of color values and to have fun with the techniques of brush strokes! Your time is appreciated! LOL....excellent teacher!
Thank you very much for your teaching. Now I understand the use of Notan. May I conclude that we can use value 10-9 plus 1-2 in the front of seen, value 8- 7 plus 3-5 in the middle, and value 6 plus 5 in the long distance of seen respectly in shade and light areas?
I know you wrote your comment about 2 years ago and you might have already worked out an approach in your painting already but, I'd like to comment just in case anyone else has the same question. The value scale is not prescriptive because painting isn't photography. It's about balance and harmony between light and dark in how you compose your painting. Diane said in the video that using a Value of 10 may appear in her painting as a black hole. That is because we only see what is "in shadow" relative to what is "not in shadow" by how light falls on the various surfaces. A value 10 would be almost an absence of light - almost 100% darkness relative to the other parts of the picture, and if you replay the video and look at her reference photograph, even the shadow has some light. That is why Dianne wasn't using black to paint the shadows. So in these terms, the extreme values of 1 to 2 and 9 to 10 are like the goalposts in soccer/football. Nothing in nature is 100 percent white/light or 100 percent black/dark, but falls in between those two extremes because our eyes cannot see those. The best chance to score is to use values between those extremes, and to move between values as dictated by what you see.
What a wonderful lesson. I’ve never really explored notan before but intend to do so now. I want to do watercolour painting so, presumably, the same thing applies, only working from light to dark. Now looking forward to doing tonal studies. PS. I love your accent!
Thank you for this... I learned a ton from this. Your arrangement of your pallet colors was brilliant. One thing to note is that your idea of notan is very different from others... You used a paint brush and put the clouds in lighter than the boat. A purist notan would use a single color marker, and would have put no dark in the sky, and the notan would have been done much smaller and never turned into the painting... With your concept of notan, you've blocked-in your painting... (I.e. no separate notan drawing was done) Blocking like this appears to be common too, but not usually referred to as notan.. Awesome and again thank you.
Thanks. One thing to note here--the notan serves only as a guiding pattern for where shadows and areas not in shadow belong. The original notan used only the two values - one light and one dark - for the total design. I'm not doing that, but am using the notan concept to indicate only the fact of light and shadow. That's what I'm doing in the first step after the placement of the drawing, so I start with a notan and build.
I recently watched a video on informing your composition through the use of notan. This particular artist emphasizes that notan is about shape and pattern! I’m too much of a newbie to even think abt disagreeing; however; I prefer the way you taught it as shadow and not shadow because this I can easily discern-form and shape are still somewhat elusive to me, so just wanted to say thanks again-simple and to the point!!
In eastern art, the original notan was about the pattern of light and dark. In the Western world of realistic painting, that concept translate easily to light including areas in light (not in shadow) and areas in dark in shadow. Within that area of light and shadow, we find our world of form and shape. FYI - there is every reason to believe that the notan concept goes back for at least two thousand years or at least for as long as the yin-yang symbol has been used.
A great drawing implement to use for a tonal drawing, notans, is a really cheap Pentel brush pen. They are supposed to be filled with water to use with watercolours, possibly supposed to be for kids. Fill it with a dark mix of watercolour pigment and it ends up as being a really nice refillable brush in a colour of your own choice. I bought a set of 3 pens for £10 so cost effective compared to felt tips. Fantastic drawing tool for sketch books. Thanks for the vids, really helpful.
Great interpretation !! I will try and look at things and pictures in another way which will help me to interpret better what I see. I watched various videos which refer to colour.I find them so useful. I am going to start watching your videos from the very beginning . What about acrylics that get dry so quickly ?
Your question about acrylics drying so quickly reminds me of when I was an art student at UGA back in the 60s. In those days, the powers-that-be in the visual art world thought acrylics would replace oils, so we were required to use only acrylics in our painting classes. All my experience had been with oils, so the first thing I had to learn was how to adjust my skills to the quick drying qualities of acrylics. There are several things you can do: (1) You can keep at hand a find mist sprayer fill water and periodically give your palette and painting a fine-mist spray, (2) You can use a retardant, (3) Though expensive to do so, you can move to the open acrylics which are slower drying.
I really enjoyed this. Notan is new to me. I've just been messing with abstract art lately, but this makes me want to try a still life following this procedure you showed. I wonder if I can use acrylics instead, though. And would you suggest I add a medium to slow the drying of my acrylic paint? Thanks very much.
Certainly, you can use acrylics when working with the notan principle. You can even use watercolor by setting the notan in a light wash of ultramarine blue. The notan can be dry when you start the painting so unless you need a drier to keep your acrylic paint open while working, it's not necessary.
