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See art in a fresh way. |
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Mini-Tutorial: Thumbnails: The Key to the Big Picture |
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When working big, work small
first. Thumbnail sketches are great guides that create
excitement and spontaneity in major works. Before embarking on a major work I draw thumbnail sketches, sometimes as small as 1x1". The purpose of them is to get a quick overview of the planned painting. The advantages of thumbnail drawings are numerous: they are quickly done; the size encourages you to focus on the total image, the big picture; and they can be throwaways, giving you freedom to explore. I like to use thumbnail sketches to study composition and atmospheric lighting. For this tutorial, I will focus on lighting. The drawing to the right is about 3x3", 6b pencil on white paper. The subject is one of the several windows in my loft.
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An easy way to begin is to
start with the brightest light you see. The very best way to
isolate light and darks in your visual field is to squint your
eyes. Squint strong enough until the details disappear and all
you see is light and dark tones.
Here I circled in orange two areas in the window. The idea is to isolate the brightest area, then delicately shade everything else, leaving the brightest areas untouched. |
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| The 2nd lightest areas are the rectangles in the upper half of the windows. Again, I have lightly shadowed everything but my top and 2nd brightest lights. |
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The third brightest lights are
the inner walls framing the window, along with some detailing in
the window. For a third time, I douse everything else with
another layer of delicate shadow. Okay. I now have my 3 brightest lights "identified." I could make many more gradations, but the idea is to keep this very simple--to see the big picture and not to get caught up in endless fine details or nuances. I am ready now to block out my darks.
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| Squinting again, I identify my lightest dark, one of 3. It's the shadow under the drape on the diagonal. |
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The next darkest is
my black CD player.
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| Lastly, I identify the metal window frames as the darkest dark. Here I really hammered home the dark. |
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Squinting heavily again, I went back into the thumbnail sketch, delicately drawing/noting some of the subtle tonal differences in the neutral/gray/mid-tone areas. Now I have a complete thumbnail sketch: the big picture view of the atmospheric lighting. The whole process took me about 1/2 hour, including stopping to take pictures of the process. Take the time to do thumbnail sketches--their guidance will embellish your big picture in a fresh way. Michael Newberry
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Online Tutorials
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©2007 Newberry, All rights reserved. |