The problem an artist can encounter when they want to start a piece is the will and want to hit the ground running. You got it all ready and set in your head, you know exactly how it ‘s going to look – but once you set your hand to the paper, you can’t even start the sketch at all.
This can be due to numerous things, but usually, it is because you might have skipped over crucial steps in the early creation process.
The stage of preparation is sometimes the stage that takes the longest, and for good reason – you’re working up your picture to a point where you have everything mapped out exactly. But if you’re a new artist, or have irregular productive patterns it’s easy to be unaware of the baby steps you might be missing.
I personally spend about 4-6 hours on a thumbnail, from its initial inception to the final draft. This is because I have realized that I absolutely NEED to dumb my sketches down to the bare bones ( This can seem silly considering I have so many years under my belt ). For this, I wade through three steps when making a thumbnail.
Let me show you:
First Thumbnail
So you’ve got an idea. A good one at that. You got it all figured out in your head, but you need to explain this idea to your hand and your eyes too.
Now, your hands and your eyes are sluggish team-mates – they need it all cut out for them and in as simple, manageable pieces as possible.
I usually keep little book-blanks ( ugly book blanks so I don’t feel like I need to provide any sort of quality to fill the books ‘quoat’ or something like that ) around for whenever an idea for a composition pops up so I can rough it out in the moment. Doing things analogue personally removes me from my perfectionistic self, due to my forté being digital.
So I can draw the idea out on a completely rudimentary level. Simple shapes, hairy lines, uneven values – it doesn’t matter, cause I’m working on the placement of the major elements. It’s merely representative. I’m ‘telling’ my hands and eyes what they’re going to be working with later.
Second Thumbnail
Next, I boot up my art software and draw the composition again based on my analogue thumbnail. Keeping all the tilts, angles and values in mind. Only when I’ve copied the thumbnail over faithfully, do I start to work on top of it. Fleshing out characters and environments but NEVER going into much detail. Still only indicating the major elements I want to be included in my piece.
In step 1 and step 2, you’re free to edit and play around, so I experiment a lot with my elements. Trying to figure out where they look the best and at what angle they would convey the story most effectively. This phase can take a -long- time if I’m trying out many things. But it’s never a waste.
Frequently, I‘ll overlay the “Rule of third’s” – grid, if I work with a widescreen/landscape format. And “ The Golden Triangle “ if I work with a “ standing “ or vertically oriented canvas. I push my elements around and make them align with the grids to ensure everything is technically in place.
I stay zoomed out at all times when working on thumbnails, it is very rare that I inspect anything closely, and if I do it’s almost exclusively on a 2x zoom. Never any more, I’m still working with the overall look after all – and going in and working on smaller things at this rate is only going to sidetrack me and get me unintentionally attached to a specific part of the image.
Third Thumbnail ( final draft )
I adjust the last few things ( in this case not so few things ) and start focusing on the light sources. Using simple gradient tools to indicate where the light will be coming from, where it’ll go and where it ‘ll be blocked off. This is the quickest phase and usually only takes about 15 minutes unless I still got some experimenting to do.
Now I’ve got a perfectly fleshed out draft based on my thumbnail. I can start sketching it up and add the details and structures I want. I’ve made everything perfectly visible and readable, I don’t have to go out of my way to ‘invent’ new things to fill the landscape or improve the composition. It’s all ready for the proper sketch.
If you’re interested in the finer details of my prefered thumbnailing method, you can visit this link to watch ChatterBuck’s ep 01 – where I touch upon thumbnailing for a while as well as the sketching phase. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTAvso5Uwqk
Skorpio's Art 