Landscape Series: The Masterpiece

Thumbnailing is an essential tool for analyzing master paintings and for dreaming up paintings that don’t yet exist.

Zoungy Kligge, Invented Landscape (A Masterpiece!)

Let’s pretend for a moment that the image above is a world-famous painting worthy of study by aspiring landscape painters, and that they have been given exclusive permission to sketch this masterpiece in a major museum! Afterwards they are given a critique of their studies by their professor! And you and I get to listen in!

The Objective

The objective of the landscape painting students is to unravel the mystery of why this painting feels like it has light, space, and atmosphere—maybe even a sense of narrative. They will use small thumbnail sketches in the first stage of their investigation.

Planning out the space

To eventually plan out a successful, luminous landscape painting of our own, we must understand how dark, light, and mid-tone shapes are used with intention to create a sense of depth, of light, and even story.

In the thumbnail copy (inset) shapes are generalized and simplified, and only 3 or 4 tonal values are used. Adjoining objects with the same value are treated as one shape.

Actually doing it

We have to do more than just thinking about doing it—we must challenge ourselves to analyze with our eyes, and physically sketch what we see, and adjust until it is correct. It is important to study how established landscape painters compose—and then practice it ourselves.

Using thumbnails sketches

We can practice by making copies called thumbnail sketches. The goal is to make a small frame (about 2-3 inches wide—not larger!) and quickly sketch out the painting’s general shapes inside the frame and fill these in with the proper values (dark, light, or mid-tone shading).

Twinning

A successful thumbnail study will mimic the overall composition of the real painting—when you squint, they look the same. (Conversely, a thumbnail that you use to plan a future painting will end up twinning your final painting.)

So let’s pretend six artists copied a famous masterpiece and got some feedback from a great teacher.

A Major Masterpiece

Sketches, and the professor speaks

Here’s what the kindly, but somewhat stern, professor had to say about the six student sketches. (The sketches are found below.)