Another small pencil sketch, this time of Ely Cathedral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe whole idea of a planning sketch is just that, to plan how the painting will go. The three essentials of any painting are composition, tonal value and colour. By working quickly in pencil I can establish where objects will go, in other words the composition, and I can establish what will be light, dark and mid-toned. A good range of tonal values is essential to creating an eye-catching painting.<\/p>\n
I suggest that, like me, you use a soft pencil for these sketches, say a 4B so that you can quickly shade in areas of tone. \u00a0Any old piece of paper will do, I often use off-cuts of mount-board from my picture framing. The most important thing is not to work too large, as you’ll get bogged down in detail. Remember this is just a plan, so work small and work quickly. That way you can do several sketches until you find the composition and tonal value that looks the most exciting. A couple of useful things to keep in mind are “no bigger than postcard size, and no longer to do than ten minutes”.<\/p>\n
I think if you practise making these small sketches before you start to paint, your work will soon go to a new and higher level. you will find that the only decision that remains to be taken is what palette of colours to use, which I will cover in another post. My last tip is, when you’ve got a great looking planning sketch make sure that you keep to that plan when you paint. It sounds easy but your concentration can soon lapse. Keep to a great plan and you’ll make a great painting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in December I posted a couple of my recent paintings and mentioned about planning sketches as a means to making the painting process easier and less wasteful of time, paper and paint. Rummaging around in my studio this morning I came across a pile of planning sketches and thought “I never did get round … Continue reading Planning your painting<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tutorials"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72Akd-9H","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":606,"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnwatercolour.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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