Creating soft pastel thumbnail sketches

"The only source of knowledge is experience."Albert Einstein

Before starting off with the pastel painting, I always do a few thumbnail sketches or study works on small cut outs of Canson Mi Teintes paper. 

It is my way of doing a preliminary study of a complicated subject. By creating these small works using limited palette of pastels, I am able to simplify the scene by understanding the value masses, the composition, the additions and subtractions. If I am happy with the small sketch and if it looks good to me, then I go ahead and follow the same steps when I am recreating the work in a bigger format. Many a times I create more than one thumbnail sketch of the same subject in order to try out different compositions.

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Thnumbnail sketch, 3.5" X 5"

Sikkim

Thnumbnail sketch, 4" X 5" 

Dubare Forest, Coorg

Thumbnail sketch, 3" X 4.5"

Sikkim

Thank you for browsing through my artworks and if you are interested in joining me in my upcoming workshops do drop in a mail to me at manjupanchal5@gmail.com.

Forest sketching on toned paper

Working on a toned paper gives me an opportunity to explore, experiment and get a better
understanding of the values in a particular scene.

In the sketching as below, the beige colour of the paper became my mid value background
for this forest scene. For the dark values in the trees and foliage area I have used different
charcoal pencils. The lighter values are created using white pastel pencils. I have also used
white soft pastel chalk in the sky towards the end.

This is my first landscape forest sketching on toned paper. The choice of paper is a very
important decision for me as it affects the outcome of my painting. I have used Canson Mi
Teintes paper ( It comes in many different colours )

Since it is my first such work on toned paper, I just did the basics and did not get into too
many details. For my next similar work I will try and select a simple composition but I do want
to try again as this has been a lot of fun.

The pathway in the forest

charcoal and white pastel pencil sketching on Canson paper

Size 6" X 7.5"

"Painting is very easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do." Edgar Degas

My next painting in progress is in charcoal medium and the subject is " Maya Bay" from 

Phi Phi Leh. It is an exceptionally beautiful bay surrounded by 100 metre high cliffs on three

sides.