Making thumbnails is a great way to explore an existing idea in your head. It allows you to focus on the essence of the idea and how you're going to portray it. Another benefit of making thumbnails, for me personally, is starting without any idea what I want to make. This allows me to push shapes and ideas around that come up during painting, without any restrictions on what I want to make at that moment. This leads to ever changing and transforming thumbnails that can inspire me or lead to happy accidents.

Below are some thumbs I made by just winging it. I like some of them but they may seem a bit too detailed or defined to be called just thumbnails. This is because I often get caught up in a thumbnail and try to push it further and further until I'm happy with it. Sometimes it's hard for me to leave it alone until it's just right and that's when I realise it's becoming a value sketch instead of just a thumbnail.

However, I think this is because I like where that thumbnail was going and what idea resides within it. The important thing to remember about thumbnails is that you can never have too many of them! :)

This week I learned something important about practicing. Often I would sketch, study or doodle something and then refrain from showing it to people. I would worry that it dind't look good.

But it's not supposed to look perfect. or very good. I realised that practice is more about learning than making a pretty picture. If I wanted to make something perfect, I would construct an image with all the knowledge and tools I have at my disposal.

Now, I just started doodling and trying out new brushes ( Thanks to Noah Bradley for sharing his brush presets ) and came back the next day to tinker on the values and textures a bit more.

Even though I'm not happy with many things in this picture, I wanted to show it because there are things that I do like; the range of values, some textures in the rocks and background and the composition. And more importantly, I still enjoy coming back to a sketch and realised that failing isn't so bad, just as long as you learned something from it.

A whimsical landscape sketch with a robot :) I quite like how the colors turned out. But while I was working on this sketch, I realised I need to study more in order to understand how to paint textures such as light reflecting on metal.

I have a feeling I am not using my brushes the correct way. My values in this painting seem to work and so does the composition, sort of I suppose. But when it comes to painting the actual elements that tell the story, I find myself seriously lacking fire power. I believe I should do some more studies of rocks, plants, foliage. Time to get outside...