Featured exemplar artists: Vermeer, Cézanne, Diebenkorn, Whistler.
No formal prerequisite. The lesson is the bridge between perceiving a subject and designing a picture. Pair the reading with notan_study to practice the design discipline directly.
The arrangement of shapes and the design of the picture plane — the structure on which everything else hangs. Successful composition leads the eye in, holds it at the focal point, and prevents it from escaping the frame.
The foundation skill of accurate observation rendered in line and shape — the structural framework that underlies every other principle. Without sound drawing, no amount of color or brushwork can rescue a painting.
The Japanese-rooted concept of designing pure light-and-dark pattern, independent of subject. A specialized framework for value composition: reduce the painting to 3–4 masses and check whether the design works.
The skill of reducing visual information to its essential design — knowing what to leave out is often more important than knowing what to put in.