The student is now ready for original [NOTAN X. Compositions by various
masters, reduced to two tones. “Spotting.”]
work with landscape, still life or figures. Sketching from nature with
brush and ink is a means of interpreting subjects in a very broad way,
obliging one to select and reject, to keep only the essentials. It
cultivates appreciation of texture and character and brings out the power
of doing much with little,—of making a few vigorous strokes convey
impressions of form and complexity. It leads to oil painting where the
brush‐touch must be charged with meaning; it is of direct practical value
in illustration as such sketches are effective and easily reproduced. It
is almost the only method for painting on pottery, as the absorbent glaze
admits of no gradation, emendation or erasure; the touch must be decisive
and characterful. Examples of brush‐sketching from nature are given in No.
48 on opposite page.
[Massing in two values, from Corot, Daubigny and Hokusai.]
[No. 48. Sketches from nature in two values.]
[Notan, two values, variations of a motif. Subordination and Repetition.]
XI.—TWO VALUES—GOTHIC SCULPTURE JAPANESE DESIGN BOOKS. APPLICATIONS OF TWO
VALUES
Sculpture, a line‐art, when designed to enrich architectural spaces, may
have the aid of notan in the form of relief and shadow. The range of tone
is narrow and the field seems limited, but the masters have shown that the
creative imagination knows no bounds. They have expressed every emotion‐
divine calm, serenity, excitement, fury, horror; and effects of light,
atmosphere, distance.
The pediment and metopes of the Greek temple owed as much to notan as to
line; we can infer from the restorations what the original scheme was.
Greek architecture, however, did not admit of extensive enrichment with
sculpture; there were few spaces to fill, and those not advantageous as to
position, shape or lighting. As the temple evolved into the Christian
church, the new forms of building and the new story to tell called for
sculpture. Through Byzantine and Romanesque it took a fresh start, pushing
upward and outward until it flowered abundantly in Gothic. Although the
church selected the themes, the sculptor might interpret form and facial
expression as his imagination directed, and compose his groups as he
chose. Old conventions were abandoned; the artist might now seek motifs in
his own mind or in nature. The result of this liberation of individual
creative power was great art. The Gothic designer used notan with dramatic
invention and magical strangeness. The French cathedrals of the best
period (XI to XIV century) notably Paris, Chartres, Amiens and Reims, show
how sculptural traditions were boldly broken and the most daring effects
accomplished without forgetting the character of stone or the
architectural requirements. The stone‐cutter was an artist as long as his
restraint was self‐imposed—as long as he held to unity of the whole
composition and kept details in their own place—as long as he carved
harmonies, not mere stories; pp. 8, 11, 29, 51, 52.
The masterpieces of Gothic sculpture may be studied from photographs and
from reproductions published by the Musée de Sculpture Comparée, Paris.
Sketch in the masses with brush and ink in two values. Draw freely, at
arm’s length, on gray or low‐toned paper, observing the character of
shapes of dark; No. 49, opposite. New avenues of tone‐thought will now
open, through appreciation of the power and beauty of the stone cutter’s
art of the middle‐ages.