How I used a thumbnail to do a bigger sketch

Yep, I'm super late in posting again. I'm still juggling between doing so many things (parenting, being an adjunct lecturer, personal artwork, creating classes I want to create on Skillshare, showing something valuable on Youtube and Patreon). It's quite a lot. I've a feeling I'm doing too much. I'm still deciding where I should be placing most of my time and why. I still enjoy posting in this blog and just showing what I've been up to. 

I've been teaching Urban Sketching with the gang again at a university. Although I teach, I also get to sit in on the other lecturer's lessons. Jeffrey was teaching the students to do thumbnails before doing a bigger A4 drawing, something I hardly ever to. I like going ahead and "attacking" a scene head on. And that's perhaps why I do a lot of cropped scenes and I seldom attempt larger, wider scenes.

I noticed that, among the students, the concept of thumbnails is something not so easy to grasp. I still see many students draw very detailed sketches that can be considered small finished illustrations. And they can often take up to 1.5hrs to do a thumbnail! Something is off about that.

So this is what I understand a thumbnail to be:

1. It is small. 
2. It is drawn very quickly. I usually take about 5 minutes to draw it. Maybe less. 
3. I simplify and capture the scene in blocks of shapes. So I outline these shapes and place them in a pleasing order. What makes it pleasing is often the rule-of-thirds and having something in the foreground, mid-ground and background, which creates depth. 
4. Then I quickly shade in 3-4 values- highlight (white), light midtone, dark midtone, and dark. 
5. I make sure the highest contrast is where I want the focus to be.

Then I start drawing my scene loosely based on my thumbail. I drew the lines lightly with a light orangey colour pencil first. The thumbnail helped me know how the scene should be cropped and how I should colour it based on the tonal value information in it. Then I added the paints and lastly the lines.

I've been liking gouache again. I bought this deep palette from ArtFriend in Singapore for about only $4. It has a rubber cover that keeps everything moist even after a week. If I leave the paint too long, it does grow mold in Singapore. So I have to be a little careful about it. I like gouache because the colours are bright and I can cover over things, even white over a dark colour.

To keep things portable, I used it with a waterbrush. For the lines I used a Derwent Lightfast Midnight Black colour pencil. The above scene is Tekka Food Centre in Singapore. It is soon going to be Hari Raya and the place is decorated.

The above sketch took me about 2 hours to complete. I was drawing with the students and also guiding students in between. That's longer than I would normally spend on an urban sketch. I usually take 10-20mins because I often draw small. But doing the thumbnail first and then using it to achieve a bigger complex drawing was rather satisfying. So I'm starting to see why some urban sketchers like this slower approach to sketching!