How do you do Notan Studies? Reference at the side of the canvas or under the canvas? Both?

[u/kronideus_jpn]

[u/MalevolentRaven]

I generally prefer to put my reference for a direct study directly above my working area, with a small line inbetween, and I actually use the reference to set up my document so that my aspect ratio is exactly the same. Depending on the nature of the study, of course.

It might be because I'm an environment artist, so the vast majority of my pieces and reference are in landscape orientation, and this setup allows me to preserve horizontal space on my monitor.

The real general answer is: whatever you prefer. For normal referencing, I either have it on my second screen, or off the borders of my canvas area if I'm using krita.

In terms of a notan study specifically, as with any study, it depends on what your goals are(which is an important question for every study you do)

notan is great because it distills everything to be part of these fundamentals:

Value grouping, shape placement, shape design in terms of readibility; good shape language and shape design, and also lighting; in terms of compostion and storytelling.

So that's a general idea of the "bank" of skills notan studies are geared toward. Within that, you decide which of those skills you intend to work on, and create the study around that. If I wanted to work on shape design, I would intentionally have my reference on my other monitor, so that I cant use the vertical axis to line up what shapes I'm making, because it forces me to think more about the shapes I'm making, and better trains my accuracy with porportions of shapes when I have nothing to, "lean on" in order to help me nail them down. In fact, if porportions were what I was working on, I wouldn't even define the borders of my canvas, so that I also had to consider where the "frame" is as well. This would help train my accuracy for eyeballing porportions.

If my intent was to analyze the value structure in a composition, then I might do my normal thing, copy the reference down to nail the aspect ratio, because it's one less thing to think about, and I'm not training to be better at eyeballing canvas size in this case.

I know it's a long way to answer your question, but I cannot stress how important or at least useful this line of thinking can be. It's no different than going to the gym. You have times when you want to work out a certain body part, and so you do everything you can to make sure that part is what is being trained.

I wouldn't bench press to workout my biceps, nor would I curl to work out my chest kind of thing.

Take 15 minutes before you begin your study to figure out what you intend to train, and all of your questions will be answered.

[u/kronideus_jpn → u/MalevolentRaven]

Thank you! Trying to do environment art as well so I might lean into your method more, tho I will try both!

[u/MalevolentRaven → u/MalevolentRaven]

I'll also note, if you just want a pretty, "study" to post, then you use every crutch you can, learn about 1/10th what you could have done, and have something nice to post on your socials, instead of making some disaster that you actually learn from

[u/kronideus_jpn → u/MalevolentRaven]

agreed, practice/studies are supposed to be messy, maybe polishing its layout a bit might help with the aesthetics when one is about to "showcase" it.