Thumbnails

Before any drawing longer than twenty minutes, make three thumbnails. Each is about the size of a business card, drawn in three values only (paper, a mid grey, a dark), with no lines and no detail. Each tries a different arrangement: the tree on the left, the tree on the right, the horizon high, the horizon low, a different crop through the viewfinder. Three minutes each.

Then choose. The winner is the one with the biggest, simplest dark shape, the clearest light shape, and a reason for the eye to go somewhere. A thumbnail that does not read at two inches will not read at twenty. Enlarge the thumbnail, not the subject: the big drawing is a faithful scale-up of the design you chose, with the subject supplying the detail.

Ten minutes of thumbnails saves two hours of a drawing that was never going to work. It is the habit that separates people who improve from people who repeat.