My desk is covered in thumbnails!!
How messy scribbles build a book
Hi everyone!
This past week, I’ve been hard at work sketching tons and tons of thumbnails for my current book project with the American Kennel Club.
This part is messy, so all I have to show for it are tons of scribbly rectangles, but it’s all those scribbles that will define the rest of the book. I find that is it’s so valuable to really spend time in the thumbnail phase. It’s low pressure, it can be messy, and stick people (or dogs!) are totally acceptable!
This stage of the process is when I figure out:
How will the story flow? How can I use page turns to add to the storytelling?
What is the composition of each page? Is there a good variety of compositions? (Not all just straight on with the characters at eye level)
What’s the color story?
Where will the text go?
As you can see, these questions are the absolute building blocks of the book. So if I’m going to spend 6 months illustrating a book, it’s best to really take time to dive into this thumbnail process and establish a strong foundation for myself to work from. Thumbnails help me to work smarter, not harder.
For example, in just one hour, I managed to fill up 13 sheets of thumbnails for all 13 spreads of the book. I was feeling to motivated and creative, so I was able to generate multiple ideas for each page. And I can keep drawing new thumbnails if I need or want to. They’re meant to be quick explorations. Then I’ll review my thumbnails, pick my favorites, refine them, and think how they’ll all fit together to tell the story!
One thing that really helped me during the thumbnail process is using a technique from . (Art Gym is a monthly workshop hosted by and me— it’s for creatives of all levels to develop their drawing skills.)
We’re teaching this technique in a live workshop TODAY. And because the topic aligns with my work, I had tested the strategy on my work to see if it can be applied to projects outside of Art Gym, and it definitely can. Watch this video to see:
A video showing me using the strategy from Art Gym on my real life book project.
And that’s just one page! I was able to generate multiple thumbnails for all 13 spreads of the book. It’s so exciting to me that I was able to use an Art Gym strategy in my actual work and that it was extremely effective for me. So I really hope that people benefit from the workshop, and I hope to see you there!
But wait, what is the technique? Just drawing thumbnails?
It’s about drawing thumbnails, yes, but we’re going to provide specific prompts to promote creativity and idea generation. And there might even be a game with a spinner… So it’s going to be fun, but also very practical for your future work!
Sign up to join the Thumbnails Workshop and try this exact technique:
Curious to learn more about thumbnails?
Adam and I have put together 3 free posts for you:
The 6 mistakes illustrators make when drawing thumbnails. (And how to fix them)
Are you skipping the most important step in your illustration process?
See some of you later at Art Gym!
Katie
PS - Here’s the link to the replay of the Thumbnails Workshop.