Line, Notan, Color—the elements by which the whole visible world is
apprehended,—may or may not be used as the language of art. Like speech,
this three‐fold language may voice noble emotions in poetic style, or may
subserve the vulgar and the humdrum. Art‐language must be in art‐form; a
number of facts, or an incident, accurately described in paint and color
may have no more connection with art than a similar set of written
statements just plain prose. There is no art unless the statements are
bound together in certain subtle relations which we call beauty. When
beauty enters, the parts cease to have separate existence, but are melted
together in a unit.
Advanced composition is only a working out of simple elements into more
complex and difficult interrelations. If the picture has figures and
landscape, the lines of each run in such directions, intersect and
interweave in such ways as to form a musical movement. The tones and
colors are arranged to enrich one another. A noble subject requires noble
pictorial style.
Experience of tone‐harmony in two and three values brings appreciation of
no‐tan‐structure and lays a solid foundation for advanced work.
SCALE. At this point construct a scale introducing more delicate relations
of tone, and involving finer judgment as to intervals.