Easy Composition Tips: Thumbnail Sketches
Whether you’re drawing or painting, you need to consider the composition of your work. Composition is the arrangement of the visual elements on your picture plane; or, where you put things. You need to take into consideration the relationship of the elements to each other, and the relationship of the elements to the edge of your drawing or painting.
Composition can help communicate feeling and meaning. The arrangement of objects can be balanced and harmonious and convey a sense of calm. Or they can be awkward and convey a sense of tension. You need to use this to your advantage!
Even if you’re working with a single subject, like a portrait, you need to think about composition. Where will the face go on the page? In the centre, off to the side, near the edge? Each arrangement will slightly alter the feel of the finished piece.
But how can you figure out the best composition? That’s where thumbnail sketches come in.
Thumbnails are small-scale drawings that let you play around with composition without investing a huge amount of time and effort into a single artwork.
How to use Thumbnails
First of all, you want to consider all the elements that will be in your piece. Below are some examples of thumbnails I did for an upcoming painting. I knew I was working with a horizon, a tree, two giraffes and the sun. My goal was to find the best arrangement for these elements.
Thumbnail drawings should only be a few inches big, but make sure they are the same scale as your finished piece. I know that my painting will be three feet by two feet, so I made each thumbnail three inches by two inches. This way, I know that the elements of the painting will fit into the thumbnail the same way as the painting.
Once you know what you’re working with, and you draw yourself several to-scale boxes, start playing around. Try as many different arrangements you can think of. This lets you see exactly how things will relate to eachother without just imagining it. This is important because artists are visual and need to see.
Choosing a Thumbnail
Pick a thumbnail that feels like it works. This really depends on the feelings you’re going for in your work. This is the thumbnail I chose for my composition. It is balanced and harmonious, each element is comfortably placed and nothing feels awkward. It also follows the rules of thirds.
We all know how it feels to suddenly get the perfect idea for your next piece. You’re excited and anxious to get going. It can be tempting to jump right in. But you’ll find that your finished piece will be better if you take a few minutes to do a little planning and find the best composition. The effort is well worth the result!
Tags: art tips, better drawings, composition
Drawing with Charcoal
Feb 21, 2010 Drawing
If the pencil is sturdy, reliable and precise, charcoal is like its wild counterpart: bold, daring and dramatic. Blacker than any pencil and rich in texture, drawing with charcoal is an altogether different experience.
Don’t get me wrong: charcoal is a versatile medium and you can achieve extremely sensitive, realistic drawings using it. There is just something about taking up that messy stump of charcoal that frees us to get big, expressive and gestural.
Types of Charcoal
Charcoal comes in a few different forms. You can get pressed charcoal that comes as a compressed stick. These can be hard, producing a grayer shade, or soft and very deep black. The softer the charcoal, the easier it will be to smudge. This is the kind of charcoal that will get your hands, your paper, and quite possibly your clothing and face dirty.
This pressed charcoal also comes in pencil form. This can be useful for detailed drawings because you can sharpen it to a fine point. It’s also much less messy!
A third type of charcoal is willow or vine charcoal. This comes in the form of an actual branch: it’s long, cylindrical and wiggly. Willow charcoal is very soft and produces a delicious dove grey. It has one of the nicest textures to draw with, but is also very smudgy.
Why Charcoal?
Charcoal functions in much the same way as a pencil. You can draw, shade and blend. But there’s something psychologically different about using charcoal. It allows you to get more expressive and work bigger without getting caught up in the details. Charcoal sticks especially, because they don’t have a fine point, can force you to focus on large shapes and general contours.
What to Draw
You can draw and shade anything in charcoal the same way you would a pencil. Charcoal also lends itself well to more expressive types of shading like hatching.
My favorite thing to do with charcoal, though, is gesture drawings. Charcoal is perfect for making the large, sweeping strokes needed to capture a gesture.
It’s always nice to have a variety of drawing tools to choose from. The pencil is perfect for detailed renderings, but when it comes to expressive drawings I always reach for the charcoal!
Please share your experiences! Do you prefer pencil or charcoal? Does it depend on what you’re drawing?
Tags: charcoal, drawing tips, tools
To Grid or Not To Grid
Feb 4, 2010 Drawing
From time to time I get e-mails from viewers asking for help or advice on certain topics. It occurred to me that other people might be wondering about these things as well. The folowing letter came from someone torn about whether or not to use a grid:
Hi. I was just wondering about using a grid.
What do you think about it?
I mean, for me I think it’s kinda cheating. I’ts a great way to help yourself so you can see were you should put everything but it feels like cheating.
Do you think it’s okay to use grids everytime you are doing a portrait?
And here was my response:
This is a great question, and one that I have also struggled with. You will always find people with different opinions when it comes to using a grid. Some people feel that it’s “cheating” and that it’s not art. Then again, some people believe that simply recreatinga photo (realism) is not art. Everyone has a different idea and at the end of the day, you will have to decide what you’re comfortable with.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with using a grid. I see it as another tool available to the artist, and why shouldn’t we use all the tools at our disposal?
One of the reasons I use it is time. I could draw a portrait without a grid, but it would take more time. When I’m doing commissions, I have to consider the amount of time it’s going to take versus the amount a person will be willing to pay. Anything that can help cut down on time is good!
Another reason why I don’t have a problem with a grid is that it still requires an “artistic eye.” Making a grid doesn’t guarantee a successful, or even a realistic drawing. The artist still needs to edit, make changes and measure relationships. When we draw, we look at how the different parts of the subject relate to eachother. When we use a grid, we are simply adding another element to measure those relationships.
You’re right, a grid can really help you to see where things should go. It’s a great tool for learning, but as you say, it may not be the best method every time. It’s really up to you whether or not you want to use it. Personally, if a recognizable likeness is your main goal, then I would not shy at using a grid!
What are your thoughts on using a grid? Cheating? Tool? Something else?
Tags: drawing tips, grid
How to Draw a Smiling Mouth with Teeth - Tutorial
Jan 31, 2010 Drawing, Tutorials
Everyone knows that the eyes are what can make or break the likeness of a portrait. What you may not realize is that teeth are almost as important! Like the eyes, everyone’s teeth are unique. It’s not enough to slap a few big chiclets into someone’s mouth and call them teeth, you need to study your reference to get just the right shape and size! This tutorial will show you how I approach drawing teeth and give you some general pointers.
Here is our reference photo, set up and gridded in Corel Draw.
First, start with your 2H pencil and draw your grid lines. Then, following your reference, draw the shapes that you see. Draw the contours of the lips and the teeth, but also draw the major shadows and highlights that you can see.
When drawing the teeth, pay close attention to the corners and edges. How flat are they at the bottom? How rounded are the corners? How much gum do we see? Notice how we see all of the front teeth, and as we get to the corners of the mouth we see less and less of each tooth. It might seem stupid, but make sure you get the right number of teeth!
Also, remember that the center of the lips may not necessarily line up with the center of the top teeth, and the center of the top teeth may not line up with the center of the bottoms.
Erase your grid lines then, still with your 2H, shade in the values that you see. Shade in everything but the highlights, layering the graphite to get the shadows. Don’t press hard or you will indent the paper! Blend with your tortillon.
Now grab your 2B and begin shading in the midtones. Here I’ve shaded the lips, the creases beside the mouth and the shadows on the teeth. Careful to avoid your highlights! Notice how the only definition of the lips is a slight difference in value at the edges. In the center of the upper lip, there is almost no definition because of a sort-of diffused highlight. We’ll add that later. Be careful that you don’t shade too heavliy between the teeth. This line is often not as dark or as regular as you think it is. Keep it soft. Blend.
With your 2B, shade in the darkest shadows. These include the corners of the mouth, the shadows under the teeth, and the shadow cast by the upper lip.Remember that the edge of the upper lip isn’t a solid, heavy line. Look at the reference and notice how it is darker in some areas than others. Blend out your shading.
Lastly, you can use your kneaded eraser to pick out the highlights. Because the teeth are wet, the highlights will have a sharper edge. I used my tortillon to draw a very light line around the highlights on the teeth to create that edge. Don’t forget the highlights that you can see on the gums, as well as the faint one on the upper lip.
Be sure to check out my other portrait drawing tutorials!
Tags: draw lips, draw teeth, portraits, Tutorials
Gesture Drawing
Jan 20, 2010 Drawing
On this blog I’ve focused a lot on tight realistic drawing, but there’s another style of drawing that I encourage you to try every once in awhile. Gesture drawing is a very quick, free style that encourages you to loosen up. Think of gesture drawing as the stretches that you do before exercise. It can get you out of that “must create art” frame of mind that can actually stifle your creativity. In fact, when you’re starting a new drawing, you should include a few gesture drawings in your preprations to let you get familiar with the subject matter.
If you’ve done any kind of life drawing, you’re probably familiar with the gesture. Life drawing sessions usually start with a series of very short poses (think 10-30 seconds). Your job is to try and capture the “gesture” of the model in a few quick strokes. This is a great exercise because it forces you to evaluate the shapes you see and simplify it to only the most important elements.
If you’re thinking that gesture drawings are only exercises, think again. Some of my best figure drawings were gestures! A gesture drawing is far more likely to capture the tension and movement in a body than a tightly controlled, realistic rendition. Canadian artist, Julia Trops, draws and sells some gorgeous, gestural figure drawings. These can be very powerful artworks.
Tips for gesture drawings:
- use a large pad of cartridge paper or news print and fill the whole page; the bigger the paper the freer your drawings
- use a big piece of charcoal or a graphite stick; using larger materials will keep you from getting too detailed
- limit yourself to a very short period of time to capture the essential “gesture” (no more than a minute or two)
When doing gesture drawing, try to experiment with different techniques. You can draw the linear elements of your subject, you could scribble the movement of the form, or you could use the flat edge of the charcoal to fill in the mass. Just remember that your goal isn’t to outline the subject, or to render any detail; you want to capture the essence of the form, its movement, tension or weight.
Tags: charcoal, drawing tips, gesture
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