Thumbnails

Using a tiny to small preliminary sketch is routine for many painters. It's useful both in the studio and elsewhere because 1)a preliminary essay of the subject helps solve composition, value patterns and so on and 2)it allows the painter to study his subject in the same way many paint: large shapes to small, broad value patterns first, without fussiness or too much attention to any details. Using a small size assures that details simply can't be included. 

In my own practice some works begin that way--small thumbnails--but usually not to work out an already planned composition. Instead a quick, small sketch can just be exploratory. Do I really want to paint this particular view or subject?  Many times these small studies aren't all that small at 8x10 or so, but sometimes I make much smaller ones, usually on little gesso panels. For example, below is a study for a possible landscape with a figure. The idea is from a video freeze frame, considerably modified. The painting is relatively tiny at 4x6 inches, or about the size of a postcard. (Depending on your monitor, it may be shown larger than the original.) The palette was relatively limited to yellow ochre, lemon yellow, cerulean, raw umber and white. Although there is little to no detail, the main ideas for a larger work are there. Because of the small size the sketch/study was finished in perhaps ten minutes. 

"Rainy Coast (study)," oil on panel, 4x6

By the way, my choice of gesso panel for many of these is because I have dozens of these small pieces of gessoed hardboard, picked up from a manufacturer when he quit business. These "drops" as they're called were inexpensive leftovers from production of larger panels. You could as easily use small, inexpensive canvas panels, pieces of illustration board, or other rigid supports. It really doesn't matter.

"Canoeing (study)," oil on panel, 3x5

Here is another recent sketch/study, even smaller at 3x5. In this case, "Canoeing" was done from a magnified snapshot taken some years back. In the case of this really tiny painting, there were two broad interests. The first was the color combinations of yellows and greens with the single, nearly centered red and the second was the overall composition, with heavy bankside foliage opposite and a near and overlapping set of branches (barely indicated) and embracing the canoes. This color oil sketch occupied no more than five minutes but captured those two interests reasonably well.