My sketchbook is filled with words, sketches, notes from books, notes from classes and lectures, incidentals, ideas, feeling words, starts of poems, and thumbnails.
I've been following blogger Barbara Newton and her exploration and use of thumbnails as a part of her painting process. You can read about her thumbs here.
Loriann Signori uses thumbnails regularly, but lately in a new way as she explores memory work. See her thumbs here.
I like the brevity of thumbnails. By necessity they have just enough information about the shapes and value to give a good idea about what's going on in a scene. In my thumbnails above, I have done many of them from life, but several of them from photographs. Photos can lead me astray with all of their precise information, but I'm beginning to try on the idea that I can reduce a photo to a thumbnail and then paint from my thumbnail to become a more expressive and painterly painter. We'll see.
Ideas are like shoes. Until you try them on and walk around in them for a bit, you don't know if you should buy them and take them home.
Do you use thumbnail sketches?
