I’ll bet there isn’t an art instructor that hasn’t spent some time preaching the benefits of doing thumbnail sketches and most students resist them. Why do we preach and why do students resist? Well let’s talk about the resistance first. […]
Sheep Shearing thumbnails One of six 8 1/2" x 11" pages I filled with drawings Howard Pyle taught his students that every painting should ...
Some thumbnails from my sketchbook from a year ago that I did for a king and queen character. I spent anywhere from about 10 to 30 seconds on each one.
Remember when you looked at clouds and saw things in them?This exercise is something like that. We humans tend so see patterns in things. It is a fun way to jog your creativity. Take a stain or...
Examples on how to plan and draw thumbnail sketches to create a composition for drawings and paintings.
A blog about the life of Susan Black, a freelance designer and illustrator living the good life in a tiny seaside village in Nova Scotia.
These videos explain and demonstrate the process of how thumbnail sketches work within the artistic process. ‘ There are many benefits of thumbnail sketches: they can save you time when working on a final piece of artwork and allow you to explore more options for composition. The demonstration shows simple strategies on how to crop […]
Well, I have been a blogging slacker! But, in my defense, I have been pretty busy since getting back from Costa Rica. I have been taking classes and teaching classes, and trying to keep caught up with everything in between. In February, I took a two day workshop with landscape painter Mitch Albala. The focus was on exploring composition through the Japanese principles of notan. We did lots and lots of composition studies in simple black marker, worked up to gray scale marker sketches and finally did a small value study in acrylic. I noticed that my best sketches looked very abstract - I had to stop thinking about the "what" that I was drawing. Drawing notans is somewhat addictive, but MUCH harder when you don't have a master peering over your shoulder and suggesting you crop that shape a little more, or make this one a little bigger. I will be posting more of them soon, but anyone who finds this intriguing should get their hands on a copy of Mitch's book, Landcape Painting. The section on notan is short, but once you get it, you can clearly see how it works in all his paintings.
On a global scale, ramen is internationally known as a delicious dish that is quick, easy, and very cheap to make. In today's tutorial, you'll learn how to illustrate a bowl of ramen, turning it...
One thing that I enjoy doing very frequently is making thumbnail sketches, small drawings about 1.5" x 1", in my sketchbooks (I especially like the Robert Bateman Recycled Acid Free Paper 5" x 7" sketchbooks). I usually line off one of the pages into 8 or so small rectangles. Using a pen, sometimes I sketch from some model or actual subject, but much more often I just draw fairly abstract compositions which come to mind. Sometimes these sketches become paintings or collages. Working this small allows me to try out a lot of compositions and ideas in a fairly short amount of time.
