Notan vs Form – Bill Perkins

[Petr Macháně]

Dear artists,

i tooked amazing course with Bill Perkins color boothcamp and i am having problem to understund the difference between NOTAN and FORM. I think i can see the difference somehow but still dont know well whats the difference. Could anyone give me some easy- english answer with some examples from google images? Thank you so much!

🙂 Petr Potter

[Joshua Jacobo]

Petr,

 

You learn about this concept in these courses. Please do these before color bootcamp!

 

https://www.nma.art/courses/anatomy-style-finding-voice-artist/

 

https://www.nma.art/courses/composition-for-visual-artists/

[Petr Macháně]

Thank you, but i actually watched this courses too and i still do not understund it. Its like too complicated university for me. Could somebody help? He says if you understund this you can be much more powerful designer which motivates me even more to understund 😀

[alessandro argnani]

It is actually a really simple difference, but very affective if you can apply it to your artworks.

Think this way to understand the difference: if you take a photo in full color and turn it in black and white you have a NOTAN matrix, very easy. After this, you can simplify further the picture  pretending that there are only 2-3 or 4 gray level. Shadows are nearly irrelevant here because most of the jod depends on local values. Maybe in the medium value areas you could spot some shadow effect, but in the lighter and darker areas the shadows effect is almost absent. And in general is not the shadows effect that you have to consider.

Instead, if you take a photo in color and turn it in black and white and trace the shadows area only, you have a CHIARO SCURO matrix (or FORM, as Perkins says).

In few words:

local values -> NOTAN

shadows -> CHIARO SCURO (or FORM)

Ales

[Author]

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