The importance of thumbnail sketches
Drawing or painting a caricature portrait is very rarely done in a single attempt (for me at least!) An important technique I learned from Jason Seiler is doing several small, quick sketches, known as thumbnails (they’re not quite as small as an actual thumbnail but they’re pretty small, maybe 1 – 2 inches high), to make sure you’ve really captured the likeness of your subject. There’s no real detail,it’s just about getting the face shape and the placement of features right.
Here are the thumbnails I did for my Owen Wilson sketch. The first one was ok, but needed more exaggeration. So I cpoied this one and used it as a guide to draw the second one. This one I was happy with, so I based the final sketch on it, and you can see that even though I decided to use this thumbnail, the final sketch is an improvement again, not just traced from the thumbnail.
Owen Wilson thumbnail sketches
Sometimes it just takes a couple of sketches like this to hit upon a good likeness. Other times it can take many many more! I have a couple of sketchbook pages full of crappy Freddie Mercury sketches, and still no finished drawing or painting to show for it! I’ll keep on trying.
One Comment
December 7th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Very useful technique, I use to draw a small thumbnail when I’m trying to sketch something, but I didn’t know that was a professional technique! Nice job Dan!