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Welcome to my not-as-challenging challenge for the month of February: The I'm All Thumbs Challenge.  For this month I will do 28 thumbnail sketches of ideas I have for larger paintings.  What is a thumbnail sketch?  It is a simplified value drawing completed on an itty bitty scale. How itty bitty?  Usually about an inch or two across or the size of a very large actual thumbnail.  The purpose is to take the painting down to its most prominent elements of shape value, and edge to see if the composition is effective.   As artists, we long to fiddle with the details before the major value structure is in.  A good thumbnail sketch will show the bones of the painting and if there is enough structure to hold all to the details.

Here are the rules:

• I will create 28 thumbnail sketches in the month of February.  It is already the 5th so I will have to do a few a day to catch up.
• I will post all of them.  I will try to post everyday but sometimes life gets in the way.
• They will be monochromatic I want to focus on the value structure not on color.  I will save color studies for another month.
• I will post them on my Facebook page.  If you want to join me, you can post your thumbnails on my FB page too.
• I can try out any and all ideas that come into my head.  This is my sandbox and I am playing in it.

Here are the first ones

I played catch-up today and did five thumbnails using two values of markers and the white of the paper.  These are Prismacolor markers the lighter one is 30% and the darker is 50%.  I worked from three photographs taken last summer.  The idea was to try out some different compositions by letting the same values flow through the shapes regardless of the objects.  I have also posted what a thumbnail sketch is not.

This is not a thumbnail, this is a bunch of lines representing things.  This is what I often see from students when they are not comfortable with doing the small study.  I always tell students " A thumbnail sketch never hurt anybody."  They don't always believe me until they trust getting away from drawing "things."

Here is a page of thumbnail sketches on an 8x10 page.  I am looking to make interesting shapes through values regardless of the objects.  Some of these are more successful than others.  Each one took about 5 minutes.  Much better to find out if a composition will work at this stage and not halfway through the painting.

  I felt these were the two that I liked best.  The top one is of figures along the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  The bottom one is of a tree sticking out of a dune overlooking a river by Lake Huron.

This is easier than doing a painting a day but I have a lot to learn by distilling the composition to simple values.