I’m thinking a lot about composition and have been watching videos and reading a book written by Ian Roberts (both called “Mastering Composition”). One thing he finds helpful is to make first a quick thumbnail of the overall composition, and then a small 4″x5″ value study in pencil. I’ve already indicated my dislike of pencil so I started trying this in pen. Then I had to (HAD TO I TELL YOU) buy some grayscale markers to fill in big areas and a few white gel pens for highlights.
The result is that I’m finally using up pages in a gray toned sketchbook. Some of these are failures, but what kinds of things fail is also useful information to have. (And by ‘fail’ I mean the sketch doesn’t read – I can’t tell what it is.) Some of them are also copies of famous paintings by Van Gogh or Hopper. I shared some of them for #inktober.
The plan, of course, is that something here will sufficiently inspire me to make a whole oil painting.
