I’ve frequently commented on how useful I find thumbnail sketches.  They are very helpful with my composition and value, 2 areas that I have had difficulties with.  I finding that I’m also starting to do and benefit more from these little colour studies.  When I’m doing my ‘serious’ painting I work at my easel or painting table but I often study my photos at the computer using Photoshop.  These little colour studies are done at the computer with my plein air palette.  They are just free little exercises where I practice things that I notice in the photos and try different ways to represent them.  So it’s the purest form of exploration and again it’s a very small investment of time yet I learn lots from doing them.

These are 4 recent examples.  Two of them are off shoots of the painting from a previous post “Under A Bridge Darkly”.  The Calgary Skyline image is an idea that I’m considering for my demo for the Calgary Sketch Club on Feb 2, 2012.  I always liked the sketch but as was my habit at the time I never recorded any value pattern so I’m trying out different value patterns now.

These paintings average about 4″ on the longest side.