Thumbnail Sketches

This small drawing is called a thumbnail sketch, and it is one of the most powerful tools we have to learn about a landscape and set our paintings up for success.

My pencil hovers over the paper and I look back and forth between the landscape and the paper. I look like a bobblehead paralyzed by the blank page and the view that unfolds in front of me. Even after painting outdoors for ten years, a new landscape is always intimidating. So, I retreat from the scene to eat another snack, find some scratch paper, and go back to square one. And in most cases, square one is a literal square-ish small sketch that I will use to get warmed up, get the pencil moving, and get over the overwhelm of a landscape painting.

This small drawing is called a thumbnail sketch, and it is one of the most powerful tools I have to learn about a landscape and set my painting up for success.

A dictionary defines a thumbnail as a “brief outline or cursory description.” While this description is rather boring, it captures the sense of simplicity and brevity that define a thumbnail. In my work, a thumbnail sketch is a little drawing usually no larger than the average credit card (or the small palette I trace because I am terrible at freehand-sketching straight lines) that I draw as fast as I can. The sketch focuses on the arrangement of the landscape elements and rough impressions of value. 

Thumbnails are a safe sandbox to explore what I am seeing, and where any “mistake” doesn’t matter because I can erase the line or simply start again. The small size and speed also help me feel less attached to a specific outcome. 

Thumbnails:

•  Provide a space to try out various compositions. No matter how many details or beautiful colors we use, if the composition is really off, the painting very rarely works as we hope it will.

•  Simplify the landscape into basic shapes and lines

• Help me see value (the range of light and dark in a painting) and experiment with how I want to mirror or deviate from the light and dark areas of the actual scene in front of me

•  Help me find a focal point for my painting

• Illuminate the big picture and help me to avoid getting bogged down in details

  
  

And, perhaps most importantly, thumbnails get me sketching. And often, that is the critical boost of momentum I need to dive into the painting without hesitation.

Making a thumbnail: a step by step example

Step 1: draw or trace a rectangular shape that is proportional to your paper. This means that if you are working on an 8x10inch piece of paper for the final painting, the thumbnail should be a small version of that 8x10 inch aspect ratio. It is really important that these are quite close; because we are creating and choosing a composition, a mismatched ratio of our thumbnail and painting page will make it really hard to transfer that thumbnail composition on the actual paper.

Step 2: Sketch, as quickly as you can and focus on the biggest elements of the landscape. I often squint my eyes a few times to do this, as it helps me focus on the primary shapes I see. It doesn’t matter whether you start with the foreground or background- let go of those labels and instead try to think and see in terms of the biggest shapes and boldest lines. Another helpful thing you can do is to hold up your hands like a frame, and move them around in front of you to “zoom in” or “frame” different elements of the landscape. I love doing this, and anyone who sees you will think you are incredibly artsy. 

Step 3: Once I have the main shapes and lines loosely defined, I move on to adding basic shading. I am not going for perfection here- far from it. My goal is to simply figure out where the lightest and darkest areas of the scene are, and make a loose record of those observations in the sketch. This is also where I will begin thinking about what I want to change in my painting to more effectively capture the scene or tell a story about the place.  

Thumbnails are something I try to do before most outdoor paintings, especially in new landscapes. While they are most often a separate sketch, I also love integrating them into my observation / nature journaling pages. I really enjoy the way the simple sketches add a lot of visual interest, and how seeing them alongside paintings embodies a more complete illustration of my experience than a refined painting alone could. 

For a long time I hid my thumbnail sketches on the backs of paintings or stashed them in the corner of my painting drawer. From social media it seemed like artists were just arriving on-site and pooping out a masterpiece without any planning, and I felt pressure to be able to do that, too. It took me a while - and many paintings that didn’t work out - for me to realize that a critical piece of the creative puzzle was missing. Once I started doing thumbnails, my paintings got better because they helped me plan ahead, choose a good composition, and know my value structure before I began using color. 

Now, I love them as an incredible tool to help me learn about, see, and paint the places I visit. And, the painted pages filled with sketches and ink drawings and paintings and words are my faovrite pieces I create outside. 

Lastly, after years of doing the sketches, I will often entertain myself on the trail by trying to visualize my thumbnail as I hike. It’s taken a lot of practice, but I sometimes skip the physical thumbnail drawing because I already have that roadmap in my mind. If thumbnails are a new practice for you, however, I highly recommend starting with the physical sketch, and building up over time to the visualized version (which, to be honest, is never as good as putting pencil to paper). 

If you try working with thumbnail sketches I would love to hear about your experience!