"Paintings With Personality"

I did this sketch on bristol board at the Presby Iris Gardens in New Jersey. It was done en plein air.

For the past couple of weeks, Honey has been sporting a “very large” black blotch on his thumbnail. It is the result of him getting his thumb between a hammer and a spike. Awwwwww, poor Honey. I’m not being unsympathetic, but it has been a few weeks. So, let’s talk about another kind of thumbnail.

I’m thinking of the thumbnail sketch. These are small sketches an artist does quickly in order to create a better composition for their painting. With thumbnails they are able to get many ideas down in a short time. There are painters who have difficulty with making thumbnail sketches; they are a little indifferent when it comes to making design decisions. It’s easier to copy what they see than it is to create something. They will dive right into a painting putting a lot of time into the effort. They have spent so much time on it they can’t give it up, even if they know it’s a bad painting. Often, they can’t recognize that the design is bad or the values are off, they just know it’s bad. That’s where the thumbnail sketch comes in; it lets us figure out the problems before we start painting.

Thumbnails force artists to stretch their brains into unexplored territory. Maybe you’ve painted the same design many times and gotten awards for the different paintings you’ve created using that design. The awards make it very hard to leave that well known composition and go on to something else. So, you are stuck and end up doing the same thing over and over again. With a little time given to a thumbnail sketch you can come up with many other design ideas that are better than the one you’ve been using far too long. Doing a thumbnail gives you a much better chance of creating a successful work of art.

Thumbnail sketches aren’t for practicing your drawing skills or for showing to anyone, and they shouldn’t contain any details. They should not take any longer than a few minutes each.

8 Steps in creating a thumbnail sketch:

1. Draw ten small boxes in different formats, vertical, horizontal, square, etc. Their longest dimensions should be no longer than two inches. Do this freehand, don’t use a ruler.
2. Make the proportions of the boxes approximately the same as those of your final working surface.
3. Think about the subject you are planning to paint as having no details. All you want to see is the big shapes, values and a few lines.
4. Find the main vertical and horizontal lines in your topic (perhaps the vertical line of a building or the horizontal line of the horizon). Quickly sketch those lines in, keeping the Rules of Design in mind.
5. Decide on the location of the focal point.
6. Find the light, middle and dark values in your subject and sketch them in. There is no wrong or right, no one sees them but you.
7. Continue drawing thumbnails, every one of them different, until you have had to REALLY stretch your imagination to come up with new ideas. Think outside the box.
8. Add notes beside the boxes if you like. The notes could be about location of the sun, color, what you like about the subject and why you want to paint it, the title you might choose, etc.

This sketch was also done on bristol board. The people were on the Rhine River with Honey and me. I drew them from a photo after returning home.

Keep them loose as you think about design and the relationships of shapes and values. When you’re finished, look at your sketches and decide on the one you are going to use. You are ready to paint and have made all design decisions without wasting any time or materials.

Create thumbnails for your next eight to ten paintings. If you don’t see better results and walk away with some truly great ideas, then don’t waste your time anymore. You will know you have given it your best shot.

The more a painter knows about what can be done in art and what works, the better they can plan their work and the more useful the thumbnail becomes.  Do you do thumbnail sketches and how many do you do?