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Create Quick Thumbnail Sketches in Photoshop

Create Quick Thumbnail Sketches in Photoshop

on Sep 28th 2011 with 15 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Adobe Photoshop
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 15 Minutes

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 10 of 25 in the Digital Art for Beginners Session
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Photoshop is an excellent tool for manipulating photographs but it can also be used as a means to create stunning digital art. This tutorial is part of a 25-part video tutorial series demonstrating everything you will need to know to start producing digital art in Photoshop. Digital Art for Beginners, by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, Martin Perhiniak will begin by teaching you how to draw in Photoshop. At the conclusion of this series you will know all you need to produce your own concept art and matte paintings in Photoshop.

Today’s tutorial Part 10: Create Quick Thumbnail Sketches in Photoshop will demonstrate a quick and effective sketching technique, which is best for creating concept objects like vehicles, weapons, and robots. In this episode we will create some sketches for a spaceship design that we will use as a guide for a perspective drawing that we will be created in a later episode. Let’s get started!

 
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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Martin is a Hungarian graphic designer, digital artist and an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor (Design Master). He is currently teaching and working in London but usually travels around the UK and share his love for Adobe products and graphic design. You can follow him on his blog or on Twitter.  

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  • Aykut Sakarya

    I love it! Never knew how to start with thumbnails, only saw them and I was like “How do they make them?!”
    Now i know, just because you had the awesome idea to create a free tutorial series. I LOVE IT!

    • http://www.yesimadesigner.com Martin Perhiniak
      Author

      Hi Aykut,

      Thanks a lot for your comment, I really appreciate it! I’m glad I could help you :)

      Cheers,
      Martin

  • Dj

    Great technique and execution. Really shows how working from high-altitude general abstraction can throw the creative juices into high gear. Taking the concept one click higher into space, and watching at a sped up rate, even though you obviously were deliberately trying to maintain variability in your sketching I could spot a pattern in the approach to each segment; which, of course, even though it was just blotches introduced a bit of non-random predictability.

    In part probably due to being right-handed, flow went from bottom to top, left to right giving the illusion that eventual orientation of the object was toward the left. For some increased variability in the thumbnails, if you need it, you might sometime try forcing yourself to begin each thumbnail from a different quadrant. i.e. almost like you were using your other hand. Forcing a different orientation from the previous ‘nail, removes from your mind any “muscle memory” or predispositions from the previous sketch and will probably increase even further the randomness and variability between each sketch — hence creativity.

    • http://www.yesimadesigner.com Martin Perhiniak
      Author

      Hi Dj,

      I love your explanation, it is a great addition to my tutorial! Thanks a lot for your highly appreciated feedback and advice!

      Cheers,
      Martin

  • http://www.buzzpromote.com Alanbuzz

    what is this. help

  • Trevor

    Looking forward to the next one already, thanks again for a great TUT.

  • remon

    what if I don’t have a tablet ??
    drawing with mouse is very hard and doesn’t give you any good details

  • Kai

    hey, great tutorial!

    but i was wondering, are you using a stylus to draw? or just a mouse?

    • http://www.yesimadesigner.com Martin Perhiniak
      Author

      Hi Kai,

      I’m using a Wacom tablet. If you want to learn more about tablets I recommend you to watch the second part of this series. I talk much more about tablets there.

      Cheers,
      Martin

  • Ashtangakasha

    Great tutorial. Very energizing! You provide a whole new approach to building ideas from almost random blobs, and you’ve made it look interesting, fun, and easy. (That’s hard to do!)

    Now I can’t wait to see what you DO with these blobby sketches. Hurry and post the next installment ASAP, please.

    Allen

  • flyingfox

    Hi Martin,

    outstanding technique for developing concept art!

    It reminds me of those “Do you see the woman or the dolphin?”-pictures. You start with no idea whatsoever and just create random shapes. Then the magic happens. The mysterious and unknown links and crosslinks in your brain somehow extract 3D objects out of those shapes and all you have to do is refining what your brain has come up with out of almost nothing.

    This is a highly efficient creative technique. I am really surprised to find this kind of jewel in a beginner’s session on a PS tutorial site (don’t get me wrong, i love psd.tutsplus but it’s such an unusual tut for this site)

    The starships “blobs” you created have such a nice organic touch to them, much like the Klingon “Birds of Prey” in contrast to the boring stereotype flying saucer shaped “Enterprise”.

    Really, I believe you helped me a lot. I love character design, but I am having a hard time putting my characters in mysterious, fantastic environments like http://www.ankama-games.com or http://www.stenarts.com do so well. I am confident that I can come up with some really nice fortresses, vehicles, bridges, weapons and the like with your technique. Normally, I try to have a pretty distinct and clear idea of what i want to come up with before i start sketching. It is truly refreshing to do things the other way around.

    Thanks a lot. Looking forward to see more ASAP.

    • http://www.yesimadesigner.com Martin Perhiniak
      Author

      Hi Flyingfox,

      Thanks a lot for your great comment and I’m very glad you found my technique inspiring. It always feels great to hear from other artists saying that I helped them develop new skills. I can’t ask for anything more than that :)

      Again, thanks a lot for your great feedback!
      Martin

  • DrEaMdSiNeR

    hi,
    i have one question…
    can u please help me more in sketching @_@!
    because im a complete begginer in degital arts i’ve just bought my tablet

    ur way of explaining how to sketch is very unusefull @_@
    because i have no idea how to paint in the first place….

    can u help me by showing how do u draw -_-
    i’ve tried doing wt u showed in this episode
    but unfortunately i wasnt able to do anything
    drawing the strokes is really really hard

  • M0nn3rs

    Hi Martin,

    I just wanted to say thank you for this series, and in particular this segment. Coming to grips with the technical aspects of digital rendering has never been a major hurdle to my work, but developing concepts has been a huge crutch. This approach is so organic and simple to use, it’s completely changed the way I approach the preliminary stages of from-scratch digital concept design.

    As a side note, I found myself wondering whether non-digital artists would or even could take this approach given the difficulty and time it takes to quickly remove or reshape marks on a physical medium. Did you learn this approach from within the digital art community, adapt it from another non-digital medium, or develop it yourself?

    Thanks again for the great tutorial. I look forward to your next series :D

  • http://wintersblatherings.wordpress.com/ wintersblatherings

    I’m getting super frustrated at this! You make it look so simple but it’s just not happening for me!