Thumbnails – small rough images used to test a composition…. in short, the making of the painting is done at this stage, the rest is almost painting by numbers!

Glenn told us of one of his students who got a job with Chuck Jones (if my memory serves me well) just by showing him thumbnails he had done!

Thumbnails are the topic of the week in this sketching class, and I have decided I’m going to make things easy for myself by choosing a subject that…. does not move! No skateboarders for me this week, thumbnails are too difficult for that.

The most static, unmoving thing in my vicinity is a castle half medieval half…. something else, that’s been there for centuries and is quite unlikely to go gallivanting around while I draw it. (it’s a castle that is painful to Shakespeare fans like me: ah, Henry the Fifth, medieval knight, young, proud, romantic, invading France on some tennis rules fuss – I swear, read the play….  well,not so romantic: he died of disentry in this castle, and since they wanted to bury him in London, like the king he was, they found a clever way to preserve the body for the long chariot trip: they boiled him in good British cooking tradition! In fact you can see the huge pot they used for it when you visit the castle. It ruined Henry the Fifth for me forever, but I digress)

The day was grey, the sky boring, and it was a good thing for it allowed me to judge values: the roofs of the castle towers and thingamajigs are almost black, the stones of the walls are yellow/white. One thing I would not have noticed, if it hadn’t been for the neutral sky, was that the central tower was warmer in tone than the rest (who said “warm? That’s where they boiled Henry!”? shhh!). Also at one point, they lit some light inside the courtyard, probably testing for a show, and I decided to use that light too (and make the sky be whatever I found best to put my castle in a good surrounding)

Here is the thing:

I worked directly using Copic markers. Those are convenient as they come in sets of warm grey, cool grey and neutral grey. Markers values are calibrated, making it easy to clarify your ideas.

The warm/cool play is particularly easy to see in the top right one.

Funny, all this  playing with tones and warmth comes to me naturally now, Glenn taught us to use them without us even noticing, while he was teaching “bigger” things. I’m always surprised at the amount I’ve learnt is so little time thanks to him.

Glenn found these “strong”. I was worried he would find the small round tower in the top right one a bit metallic looking (how the hell did that happen? could be useful for other things!) but it did not bother him, as this is a study.

He told me that markers were a good idea (for the reasons mentionned above: calibration of values – no need to fight to make the right shade with your 2B pencil), and I think I’m going to go on using Copics for those sketching assignments – ok, it means having my pockets full (army trousers with thigh pockets, cool greys in the left one, warm greys in the right one…. you get the picture). By the way, some of these Copic I bought ten years ago, barely used, and they are still like new.

I’m feeling surer of myself, thumbnails scared me, particularly colored thumbnails, but it seems Glenn painlessly taught me more than I thought!

See you next time for more surprises!