Notan - the study of light and dark in design

Today we had our monthly art group meeting and learned about "Notan", a Japanese word that means "Lightness-darkness". It represents the basic principal that you need both light and dark to make any good piece of art or image....which is so relevant to photography. It's sort of like the yin and yang of art. Lightness needs darkness to define it, and likewise. In the west we talk about positive and negative space....a light space cannot exist without a defining darker space next to it. It is usually the darker spaces we see first...interesting to think about.

Todays exercise was to create a cutout design using the Notan idea....and flipping the cut-outs back on themselves, creating the yin and yang, the light and dark. I really loved this design that Anne Price Yates put together. She's a watercolor and mixed-media artist, and has a real eye for design.