I’m enjoying my Cintiq so much that I started three illustrations at a time and I haven’t finished any yet, so I’ll post my warm-up sketches in the meantime.
These are more thumbnail-sized studies than sketches, to be honest.
I have this tendency to jump straight into the thick of things earlier than I should, so warming up on colour and composition first thing in the morning usually helps.

Now, the purpose of a sketch, or a study if you want, should be that of focusing only on the main, most important elements in a drawing: composition, value masses, balance of warm and cold colours and so on.
Most of the time this kind of sketches should be little more than abstract combinations of undefined blobs and smudges. If they don’t work well enough at thumbnail size, then nothing you do further down the line will ever fix that.

Another big advantage of thumbnails is that you literally have no chance to stick any fine detail in them to aid the drawing. Only the big, important things would fit.

Unfortunately, I am of a fiddly nature and I often fail at that.
Even at thumbnail size I struggle at detaching myself from the subject matter. I still have to force myself into thinking in terms of volumes interacting with each other instead of things happening and stories told. They are distracting at this stage.

So what usually happens is that I start with good intentions, then I go like “hey, this is obviously a rock, let’s put some cracks and wrinkles on it” and the entire purpose of sketching gets lost along the way.

But here you go. I should have called these “something between sketches and slightly more polished drawings”.
There’s another bunch of these sitting somewhere on my hard drive at home, I think I’ll post them shortly.
Because you know, I also started sorting out my brushes (too many of them I never use), so I’ll be busy being picky for another couple of days at least:(

by Paolo Puggioni

4 Responses

1. Valentina says:

   November 5, 2012 at 14:12

   Yes but now you must make them bigger! They’re lovely 🙂

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     November 5, 2012 at 18:26

     That’s the plan!

     Reply
2. blueyedhawk says:

   November 5, 2012 at 14:48

   Sono meravigliosi

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     November 5, 2012 at 18:25

     Aww grazie!:)

     Reply