THUMBNAILS & SKETCHES

Thumbnails and Sketches (A Blog by Mike Barr)

“Thumbnails and sketches’ - it could be a line from ‘My favourite things’ from the Sound of Music, but really, they are certainly some of my favourite things when it comes to painting.

There are times when it really helps to do thumbnail sketches first – it’s like a trial run with no pressure at all to get things right. What it does do, is clear the mind of peripheral things. It can also reveal what you don’t want it to look like!

The important thing is to do it quickly – in a minute or two. The whole quickness thing disallows any attention to detail, because a thumbnail is about composition only. It enables you to do several versions of them without it being too much of a time issue. There is nothing worst than doing trial runs that take too long – the whole project can easily run out of puff if things are dragging their feet before even starting on the finished painting.

Having a composition guide only, provides a clear path without the complication of colour. In fact, if things are looking good in the compositional roughs, we can feel that colour is an open book.

How big should the thumbnails be?
Well, it doesn’t matter, but the smaller they are the more you can do in no time at all. Several of them can certainly fit on a small page.

I prefer a thinnish black marker as it prevents the use of an eraser, but using pencil will make it easier to produce a tonal thumbnail and sometimes this is important.

Sketching – can be a great way of simplifying complex objects in preparation for painting. I have found that drawing figures and using them as a reference instead of a photo is very helpful. Mostly, it gets rid of two things that may distract us – colour and too much detail.

Drawing with the intent of eliminating colour and too much detail will help in the painting process. Again, colour will become a thing you will feel more in control of if we just have a black and white reference. Being captive to the colour of the reference is often not great.

I remember back quite a few years ago being at a test match at the MSG. I had some great fun sketching the back of heads in the crowd and noting the play of shade especially with those who had hats on. It can be done almost anywhere if we have a few spare moments.

The important thing when we are sketching purely for the purpose of a painting reference, is not to get bogged down with it. The more careful we become the worse it will look and the less enjoyable it is liable to be. Having a ‘free’ hand and wrist is a great habit to get into – eventually we will produce artful work that will be very useful in capturing little moments and produce lively paintings.

How does that song go again – thumbnails and sketches…”

Happy painting.