Why must it be one or the other? Recessed and pendants are for different functions. The can lights are for ambient room lighting. That will brighten up the workspace on the island. Pendants are decorative lighting. They add mood, warmth, and style to the space, but they are not really intended to be a primary source of functional light. I vote for both. Here is a link that might be useful: Our bungalow and kitchen remodel blog

Good stuff from Beverly above. If you're a visual person (like me) you can also try the balloon trick. Blow up some balloons to be the same size as the lights (as close as possible.) Or you could mock something up with cardboard which would work well since your lights are rectangular (and very cool by the way.) Then hang your mockups on strings from the ceiling. You can play with positioning and length of string to see what you think. Stand by them to check your sight lines when working at the counter, and check them from further away to see how they look. I did this when I replaced a light in my kitchen with a light that has 3 separate globes that can be hung at different heights. I moved my table under the mocked up "light", sat the kids down for dinner, and fiddled around with the strings until I was happy with the heights of the balloons compared to the table. Then I kept the mockup hung nearby for the electrician to follow as a guide.

well I guess the beauty of reading these forums is you really do get some great visuals. In Scott's new kitchen, the photo shows that it looks quite nice with just 2 pendants around the sink.https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5730930/heres-my-new-kitchen#comments

A little more explanation leading up to a lighting suggestion after reviewing your provided layout: In general concept, when you place recessed-style ceiling lighting at the counter edge, you are providing task lighting on your counter workspace as well as simultaneous throw onto the floor adjacent to the cabinet. So the fixture is providing general ambient lighting for the room, but since the kitchen functions require more footcandles, these ceiling lights provide the high lumens needed for task lighting and you exploit those. Your upper and lower cabinet interiors/drawers will also be well-lit, without the shadow caused by the person standing there. With most lumenaires, because of it's ~12" placement away from the upper cabinet you will get a small hotspot or visual cone on the door, but that is a tradeoff to solving the task lighting with a catch-all solution. Because undercabinet lighting is close to the surface (both counter and backsplash) and it's cone of throw is "fenced in," a fixture style with lower lumens is chosen rendering it more of a "supplemental" lighting to the task lighting of the ceiling fixtures. But, you cannot strictly define it as only task lighting because of the low lumens, the sometimes haphazardness of upper cabinets to your work surface, and it's exploitation for accent lighting and layering in concept. You could raise the lumens to focus on task lighting and limit ceiling fixtures to ambient, however you are sometimes left with a poor solution where you can't balance the lighting between ambient, task, and accent, nor provide task lighting where you need it, illustrated in this example: Of course, these principles are general solutions to what you will be presented with in most kitchens. That is, using fixtures that are efficient in cost, installation, and aesthetics, thus a lumenaire that can cover a combination of ambient, task, and accent lighting to some degree. If your project's characteristics have attributes that need a little adjustment in the strict definition of which fixtures provide which lighting methods, then that is completely acceptable. You would see this often with high-end kitchens, specific design aesthetics, prominent circulation, some galley kitchens, or non-mainstream cabinet layouts. _____________________ Looking at your specific perspective drawing, you have an entirety of 24" deep upper cabinets and very minimal wall counter space. So if your kitchen genre calls for an efficient solution to lighting, then I would suggest 3" recessed cans which can be spaced closer to each other and have no choice but to be placed within the aisles. However, the primary purpose of these is to provide task light within the upper and lower cabinets, so they would not be centered over walkways in a grid to light up your path, but placed appropriately for a cabinet/set of cabinets. Then with the 3 enclosed wall counter spaces, where the range (which the hood will probably have it's own spots) and beverage appear to have the uppers too high to have accent lighting double as supplemental counter task lighting, utilizing under cabinet 2" ("puck style" if need be) fixtures directed at the counter. As far as the island and pendants, it may be too tight of a width of room, too much vertical orientation with the tall cabinets and mostly skinny-width doors, in what looks like a 9' ceiling, and no location where you would get a broad, setback, visual perspective to appreciate the proportion of any pendants, all of which might render the pendants "invisible" but at the same time cluttering the visual of the cabinet faces. And along with your non-symmetrical sink placement and only 3.5' counter width, it may be best to only have recessed lights. But, it just depends on the pendant fixture chosen, how transparent and how well it can provide task lighting, and your cabinet finishes/styles. Along the beverage wall I would definitely place uplighting to the ceiling and make sure the lumens balance with the counter lighting below. If your aesthetic and budget is at a higher level, say to match the rest of house or tigerwood cabinets, then another route is for 2" ceiling fixtures (which would have more design-oriented lumenaire selections) and they would light the walkways with general ambient light, but the interior of cabinets would need a light for each shelf.