thumbnails & challenges

Friday, February 17, 2012


Flo's Pitcher No.1 - 9 x 12 - mixed media collage drawing - Susan Black

I am a lover of the thumbnail sketch. Now this wasn't always so - I'm a fairly recent convert. Way, way back in time, in the days before computers. Oh, oh we just lost a few readers - she's talking about ancient times again. I know it totally blows my nephew's mind when I use that phrase before computers & god forbid I utter before we had internet. Huh !?! How could there be a time before it ??? I ask myself the same question daily. Lucky us. Well, there was a time & I do remember it. The idea with these quick, small sketchy drawings is to flush out as many ideas & concepts as possible without putting out a lot of time & effort. Brainstorming with a pen. In the beginning I found it really hard, your mind tends to want to land on one idea & of course once you've landed there you really want to go with it. The other snag is until you become confident in your loose drawing/sketching skills it can be a bit of a bummer. I know for years I really wanted my thumbnails to be pretty, to be tight, concise & practically miniature versions of a much more finished idea - which kinda defeats the whole purpose.

In the past few years, as I've been working on developing my own style of illustration, I've really gotten the hang of drawing thumbnails. I love them. In fact I love how they look just as they are. Quirky, loose & free. Many, many of my best ideas have started this way - just a teeny 2.5 inch high very quick sketch in my journal or day-planner.

This new collage drawing's composition followed the thumbnail almost exactly. Even though I'm quite pleased with the final piece it's not at all the vision I had in my head. The picture I had was something much more delicate, softer, pretty even & with a more pastel & muted palette. My challenge for today is using the same enlarged thumbnail to see if I can create another version with a completely different feel - I may do several different versions from this one thumbnail.

Watching/listening to back to back episodes (on youtube) of the Rachel Zoe Project - love her !!!


Enlarged thumbnail from les sketch-journal-rant-whine-list-dream-plan-(everything) book


Flo's pitcher No. 2 - line drawing with 0.1 drawing pen - stage 1 - Susan Black


Flo's pitcher No. 2A - with gouache & ink - stage 2 - Susan Black

13 comments:

  1. god love thumbnails! where would we be w/o them? good work, my old-school sister! xo n

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  2. thanks sweet n.
    xoxox happy weekend

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  3. that is so very beautiful! This could be your "ode to thumbnails" post. On one of my moose silhouette chalkboards in my Studio it says "welcome to life *BC" *before computers, (a little letterpress joke)
    tail wags,
    ~moose

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  4. hey Moose it is really an "ode to" I think drawing thumbnails is a super useful tool & in so many ways - stay tuned woof! keep me posted on your branding please ;-)

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  5. That's awesome - seeing the progress from sketch to completion.

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  6. I make sculptures, often in relief form, and usually start off with a collection of charcoal thumbnails, with white crayon for highlights and a paynes grey wash on top. They really help in working out proportions. I keep them all, in paper folders according to the theme I am working on.
    It took me years to find a system that worked, though!

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  7. Wishing you had a blog Veg Artist we'd love to see both your thumbnails & your sculpture pieces xo s + gang

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  8. my thumbnails look like thumbnails....yours look like mini artworks.

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  9. just amazing to see your creative process! i cannot believe you get such detail into a thumbnail! LOVE the finished piece :)

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  10. wow...you are an amazing creator... Thumbnails, yes!! I am always doing and talking about thumbnails and my husband thinks I'm crazy..I don't care.. they work..
    and there are many times when i yearn for those "before the computer" days to be back again... I accomplished so much more back then...

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  11. Lovely. You are so very talented.

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