^^Thumbnail sketches and reference photos for “Burn Out.” (Just a normal Saturday pretending to be wicked counsel to a plastic skull taped to a tripod).
Why do artists do thumbnails, anyway? The way I frame it in class, our ideas generate questions, and thumbnails are an efficient tool to answer them. They're not as committal as jumping straight into a tight sketch, and since we can draw them purely using our imagination, we're not letting other tools take control of the answers to those questions early on.
I like to think of my interaction during the thumbnailing process as a call and response. Thumbnails also generate questions to answer as you iterate. For example, in one thumbnail for "Burn Out," I increased the number of "inner voice" background characters, and it made me ask: how many there should be? The answer I decided on based on the story I wanted to tell was: "Enough to feel overwhelming, but few enough that it still feels intimate." The number is insignificant on its own, but I ultimately ended up with seven because felt like it fit with that answer given the scale of the figures.
If I hadn't let those questions happen naturally I would have stuck with (what I think is) a less interesting idea of the inner voice being represented as a single figure.
After reaching a point where I wanted to combine ideas from thumbnails 3, 3B, and 3C, I shot about 50 reference photos to start getting a sense of the angles, lighting, and where the figures should stand. From those I created a rough value sketch, then shot about 40+ more reference shots to get some specific things the rough sketch told me I needed, like lighting information, hands, and more facial expressions.
^^Steps in the digital painting process, from thumbnail to rough value sketch, tighter sketch with color, and a midstream work in progress
When starting to work in color and tighten up the image, some important decisions were choosing exactly how I wanted to let the photo references direct me, and where I wanted to intentionally deviate. For example, I had a lot of fabric reference for the central figure’s dress, but what felt most important was achieving a texture that felt something like dripping candle wax. So many of the fabric fold shapes at the bottom were made up, but I was able to use the reference to guide how to light them.
The final digital painting is rendered while looking at reference, but again it’s like a dance- when does the information in a photo get to lead, and when do I need to impose my own choice onto it to make it fit the story? I feel it’s important to keep asking those questions until the very end.