Dow's plate of ten small pictures by Manet, Tiepolo, Millet, Corot, Mauve, Fortuny, Giotto and Seymour Haden, each reduced to flat black shapes on white.

Concept · Arranging the Picture

Notan and Value Massing

Value massing groups a picture's lights and darks into a few big shapes, in two or three values: Dow's notan.

Here Dow cut pictures by Manet, Millet, Corot and others down to flat black and white; what survives is the design. For value itself, see Color Theory.

  • Dow kept notan apart from light and shadow: it is a pattern the artist designs, not a fact of nature.
  • It holds, he wrote, "whether colored or not."

See

Image: Project Gutenberg · Public domain

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