Creating and storing Thumbnail sketches

"Good drawing forms the 'bones' on which a strong painting hangs." Chris Bingle

My blogging has taken a backseat. I am busy creating several thumbnail sketches or studyworks

so that I can start a fresh series of "ARTWORKS". Posting individual sketch can be a tedious task.

Therefore I group some of them together after editing, which makes blogging more convenient.

As I mentioned in my previous post, only some of my study sketches get converted into serious

artwork. In the sketches below there are scenes from Iceland, Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, Panchgani and Phi Phi Leh. 

Four out of six of these painting have appealed to me with respect to composition and colours so I may go ahead and paint them soon on black Canson Mi Teintes paper.

Thumbnail sketches or Study sketches of Landscapes

on Canson Mi Teintes paper

Size 3.5" X 4.5"

I have been painting for several years now and "Thumbnail sketches" was not part of my routine until the year 2014. Slowly and steadily as I worked my way up the ladder, I realised that spending

a few minutes at creating a preliminary sketch takes care of lot of issues and helps the

final art piece to reach its desired stage. In other words nine out of my ten works reach completion.

Storing thumbnail sketches was a big concern in the beginning. So I came up with the idea of

using my old "Photo Albums". It worked really well for me.

Old Photo Albums

for storing Thumbnail sketches.

After completing the sketch I normally lift the polythene sheet carefully and then slide the 

painting inside from the open side. As the sketch is created in soft pastels, there is always a 

chance of its getting smudged, however the smudging is negligible and it can be easily

corrected if required. 

I have posted below two images of some of my initial study works in 2014when I was deeply 

into landscape study. It is a pleasure at times to go through some of the past works. 

Old Photo Albums, now used for storing

my Thumbnail sketches created in

Soft pastel medium.

Thanks for visiting my blog and browsing through my works. Do leave a comment to let me know how you store your artworks?

The snow capped mountains

" I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process." 

 Vincent Van Gogh

Created four more study works in water colour medium using my photographs from Himachal.

I have also used a few photographs from Leh Ladakh trip which were provided to me by a close

friend of mine. 

Most of the paintings as below are done with very limited colours. Since a major part of the 

landscape is covered with snow, the other colours that I use are ultramarine blue, crimson, 

burnt sienna, sap green, raw sienna and sometimes Indian red.

I keep creating these small works and then when I want to create a larger work then along with

the photograph I use these water colour sketches. After completing each one of them, I write a

few notes under each of these paintings, as a reminder to myself regarding some new colour 

that I used OR if I have made a mistake and how to rectify it when doing a bigger painting.

Most of the times it helps.

Water colour study sketches

of snow covered mountains

as seen in Himachal

and Leh-Ladakh

Study sketches of landscapes from Himachal Pradesh

Soft pastels is a great medium to work with and one can easily get addicted to using them. I had decided some time back to shift to acrylics on canvas but then changed my mind as I am enjoying my recent works based on my visit to Spiti valley in Himachal Pradesh. I have a whole lot of reference material in the form of photographs and sketches that I created on location and the places there are so amazing that I cannot resist myself from painting them.

Given below are images of some study sketches that I created on canson paper sized 3" x 4". I create a whole lot of study sketches but I do not necessarily enlarge all of them into actual paintings. I get selective. The ones which appeal a whole lot to me in terms of composition and right values become the reference as my next subject for a bigger painting which normally by my standard is 6" x 9".

Study sketches of landscapes from Spiti valley of Himachal Pradesh

As I stated above I may not use all my sketches to create bigger works, however I take care to preserve all of them in a folder by protecting each of them with a butter paper in between so as to avoid smudging of pastels. Sometime in future you never know, one of them may come in use.