Why does a certain painting win first place in an art competitions? The answer lies a lot in the harmonious arrangement of black and white in the painting. A synthetic arrangement of dark and light creates an impression of beauty, regardless of either the colors used or of the subject matter. This is called "notan" from the Japanese word that means "dark/light harmony. Notan is such a powerful contributing factor to the success of your painting that it warrants a complete set of courses to help you master it. The process may seem simple, but it is surprisingly difficult to do well. Here are some of the things you will learn in these courses:

• Mass versus contour notan: why it is important to differentiate these two ideas if you want to learn how to develop more creative ideas in a shorter time
• Color notan: a great way to explore alternative color harmonies
• Edge notan: how to strengthen your paintings with a simplified value transition structure (like JMW Turner, and Thomas Moran)
• How to put it into practice: I will share with you a series of successful paintings and how the notan structure was planned in advance.

A strong notan design is therefore the key to a strong painting. Without it, both color and line fail to reach their full impact. In fact many of the most powerful master paintings have very simple value structures, that is to say, they only use two, three, or four major values. For example, many of Monet’s masterpieces use just two values. The idea is simple, but effective notan paintings are hard to do. It requires an understanding of dominant values and how to flatten values into a narrow value range. It is also very easy to waste time on excessive detail, and at the same time miss the essence of the notan design. This course will help you solve those problems.

Nothing else will contribute more to the success of your final painting than planning the notan correctly. Just about every painting that I have had win a competition, or got published in a book has had a very strong notan structure.

Here are some notan sketches for two award winning paintings.

Buy all six Notan courses at once and save $40 off the list price! Full price for all six courses would be $90.00, you pay only $49.95.

The Notan package includes:

• Notan Unit 1 - Mass Notan Part 1
• Notan Unit 2 - Mass Notan Part 2
• Notan Unit 3 - The Contour Notan
• Notan Unit 4 - Limited Value Studies
• Notan Unit 5 - Color and Edge Notan
• Notan Unit 6 - Gallery