Hey, welcome to Fireside Technique. I am Jake Meeks, and normally on this show we focus
exclusively on tattoo related subjects because I myself am a tatty banger. I've been banging
tatties for a long time. Sometimes I'll do like some sweet barbed wire around somebody's. Other
times I've been known to do some knuckle bangers, little like Fireside rules, that kind of stuff.
Like that. Fireside, Fireside rules that doesn't,
that actually doesn't work. The numbers are all, the math doesn't work on that.
Today we're gonna focus on a subject that directly relates to tattooing and that is
painting. And I'll tell you why we decided to make this episode. It was actually twofold.
One. A while back, several months ago, we did a quick little technique on
Thumbnailing and how Thumbnailing will make you a better tattooer,
and by thumbnailing [00:01:00] we mean quick. Sketches, compositional sketches
to determine the flow and the balance of dark and light shapes on the body, things like that.
All the important stuff that leads to successful tattoos down the line. Well,
that episode actually got a lot more attention than I would've ever guessed.
I thought that one would fly right under the radar and six people would actually
get something out of it, which is enough for me to do an episode quite honestly.
but to my surprise, there were a lot of people that got something
out of that episode because we get a constant kinda stream of comments
on it. We did some thumbnail templates that were, you know, cheap giveaways,
like eight or $10 templates of body parts that people could download to use to do thumbnails on.
And those things have been selling pretty well, which led me to believe that people
were actually interested in thumbnails. Couple that with the fact that I was going
through some old footage and I came across myself laying out thumbnail drawings for a
painting. Actually, this painting dropped the [00:02:00] painting in right here,
this painting that I did for a group show at Art Realm Gallery in Austin, Texas.
The show was called Orbs, and they sent us all a bunch of round canvases to paint on.
So I had recorded myself for whatever reason, I actually don't remember why I
recorded myself doing thumbnail layouts for this painting. And there were a few
challenges to this painting or things that I thought that I could use in this painting,
elements that I could use in this painting to make it more dynamic.
And I wanted to test out by you doing thumbnails. So without further ado,
here is my thumbnail series that led to the creation of this painting. I hope you enjoy
it. So here is my setup for the painting. It's the old grapefruit tied to the ceiling trick,
the oldest trick in the book. And it's a pretty simple layout,
obviously. Just a couple of elements with a single light source, but as we pan around it,
you'll see that there are [00:03:00] actually a lot of different variables
here. There are a lot of ways that I can present this composition and a lot of focal
points that I have to choose from. So with that in mind, I went over to my thumbnail
templates that I had already laid out and I started to block some ideas in.
Now I started here with the string. The string was actually a pretty important element to me
from the start just because. I, I was trying to decide whether I wanted to drop the string
directly down the middle of the canvas, the shape of the canvas to split it in half,
or whether I wanted to offset it, and, and ultimately I decided that since this really
couldn't be a symmetrical composition because of the knife hanging out of one
side and the grapefruit, that sat kind of crooked in the as it sat in the string.
I decided to reinforce that idea by offsetting the string just slightly
to one side or the other. And I think I kept that kind of all the way through. , another
main concern that I had was [00:04:00] the relationship of the two circles, the two orbs,
meaning the shape of the canvas itself, which was an eight inch round canvas and the grapefruit.
So those two I thought could have a pretty dynamic relationship. So in this first one,
I. It looks like I chose to shrink the size of the grapefruit and reinforce the knife. So I'm
looking at the handle of the knife as being a a main element or a focal point in this layout, and
that was something that I would, that I was kind of battling with back and forth the entire time.
You'll see also I'm starting to block in the cast shadow on the wall,
which I knew was gonna be a main element no matter what, because it is the darkest shape,
and it's also one of the biggest shapes that's really bold on the wall because of
that strong single light source. So I knew that was a factor that I had to deal with.
And so my, my decision here was whether to make that secondary to the handle of the [00:05:00]
knife or to the grapefruit. And in this first layout, I chose the, the. I'm spending about
two minutes each on these drawings. I don't want to go too far with any one. Drawing two minutes
seems to be enough time for me to block in the major shapes and, and determine my light source.
I, I wanna make sure that I. Don't get so far in that I feel too invested in any one
drawing and then feel obligated to stick with it even if it's not going well. I know I have
that tendency where if I go so far with something, then I'll that I'll tend just to
stick with it because I feel like I already have too much time invested and I wanted to
make sure by the time I got through all of these thumbnails that I was comfortable just
scrapping the entire thing if I couldn't find a composition that I thought worked.
You know, with eight thumbnails here at two minutes each on the first pass,
I'm only in for less than 20 minutes total. And if I couldn't find anything that would work,
then that would be fine too. I could just trash it and, and set up a new composition.
So in the second layout, I chose to let the [00:06:00] grapefruit fall off of the canvas.
And that's always something that I'm interested in or something I'm playing with, is how the shapes
relate to the edge of the picture plane. You can make, you can create some really interesting
tension. With with how the major shapes relate to the edge of the plane and with, with having
both of these circles to deal with, both with the edge of the picture and the grapefruit itself.
It was it was something I knew I wanted to play with. I think I was realizing pretty
quickly that I didn't want it to fall completely off of the picture plane,
but it is important to to spend the full two minutes on each drawing and render them all to
about the same level of finish. So that whenever I step back and look at all of my layouts,
they all are kind of equal in, in, in how far that I got with them.
That way I don't unfairly judge one, you know, kind of above the other ones. Now here I'm playing
with the blade of the knife, really pushing the edge of that of that canvas. You know,
kind of like [00:07:00] tucking right up against it to see if I can create some. Tension there.
Another thing I should say is that I'm not actually changing the setup at all.
I, I'm looking at my still life setup, but it's still lit from the opposite side,
just the way that you saw it when, whenever we started this video. All I'm using it for,
I'm kind of inventing these compositions. All that I'm using my still life for at
this point is to determine what the potential focal points could be.
So I'm looking at it and I'm looking at the light source.
I'm looking at the cash shadow. I'm looking at the highlights on the,
on the grapefruit. I'm looking at the, the way the light hits the knife, and I'm just giving,
I'm using that to inform myself of potential. , hierarchies within the design. And then, so
I'm kind of inventing the design based off of the information that I'm getting from the still life
rather than constantly changing the light source and spinning the grapefruit and stuff like that.
So in this one I went with a super for shortened view of the knife handle so
that I'm looking almost down at the handle. Again, I [00:08:00] think this was one I
knew pretty early on that I wasn't crazy about. It just looked too. I don't know
too fake. It looked it wasn't, it wasn't the effect that I was going for it all,
but I still went ahead and, and finished it out to the same level as, as the others,
even though I knew pretty early on that it wasn't something that I was interested in.
And making a painting. So here I decided to change it up and look at a different
knife. So if you remember, the knife in the actual setup is a wooden handle.
And then I found this sterling silver knife actually at my grandmother's,
I found it at my grandmother's house. And And snatched it from her.
And, and I knew using the sterling, sterling silver with all the ornate
patterns and the way that it catches light, that if I went with this knife,
it would have to be the focal point. There'd be no way around it. I, I couldn't do all the fancy
stuff that this knife requires and still render the grapefruit as far as is I would want to.
So the grapefruit would have to become secondary and the knife would have to. Would be kind
of the dominant element in [00:09:00] the, in the painting. At least that's,
that's the way that I see it. I'm sure that some people can make it
work. You still make the grapefruit a a focal point. So I'm playing with the handle here,
and then I realized that I've already set up a couple of handles this same way.
So I went ahead and I changed it, I think right about here. And I lay it kind of perpendicular to
the way that. String is coming. So I'm almost like creating these geometric shapes here,
like the like I'm slicing up a pie. So I wanted to play with the knife going
straight at a diagonal from the from the direction that the string was coming from.
It ended up being something that didn't work, but that's the kind of thing you
never know until you start experimenting with it. So here I actually ended up spinning the,
my paper upside down just to make it work for the camera. That's not ideal. You can
look at all the drawings on the bottom and see that they're all upside down.
Now ideally you, you draw everything with a pick, with a paper pointing the same way,
so you can step back and look at everything together. But I, [00:10:00] I wasn't able
to do that, so I'm, I'm fighting a little bit of an uphill battle, but,
but this one I decided to make the grapefruit a little bit smaller than
the one that is directly below it, but keep the entire grapefruit in the picture plane.
But I kind of tucked it right against the edge of the canvas to create that tension there. And I
think that this ended up being the thumbnail that I, that I went with. Now, it changed throughout
the course of the painting, but this was the basic layout that I ended up using. You can see,
I'm not really, you know, trying to be super realistic with any of this stuff.
Like the shape of the knife is just very simple cubes. The shape of the grapefruit is just really
simple spheres. So I'm, I'm, I'm not worried about detail at all. In fact, my my, goal here
is to make sure that it works in the most abstract way possib. So if it if it turns out that I needed
to start using detail in the knife handle or highlights in the orange or [00:11:00] textures
here or there then that, that would tell me that this composition wasn't strong enough to, to use.
I need the abstract shapes to work completely on their own. You can see
how much I'm generalizing here just by how the shadow shape of the grapefruit
almost falls right into the cast shadow. I'm just kind of calling those one big
shape at this point, even though they will get separated and defined as the.
Develops on this, on this front end. My goal is just to really simplify the,
the overall light and dark shapes.
So it looks like on this one I'm even pushing the, the knife handle further and really exaggerating
and almost making it kind of, cartoony and kind of treating it like a third or, or a third
sphere. The edge of the knife, even though that knife is actually kind of squared off,
I was kind of playing with, with just using spheres all the way through.
And you can do that. You can always like you know, you can, you can make this stuff whatever
you want. Using [00:12:00] visual reference is great, but it doesn't mean you have to make your
drawing or painting look exactly like your visual reference. Now this one is a similar
layout to the earlier one that, that I did and I think that I was that I had decided.
I liked the layout. I liked how the grapefruit sat in this one,
but I was just slightly changing the angle of the knife. So so that's an important thing. You know,
these thumbnails don't have to be completely different from each other. If you get three or
four thumbnails in and realize that you like one particular direction,
you can start making variations on that direction rather than continually doing brand new things.
Like in, and like I say, in this circumstance, I liked the the placement of the grapefruit,
but I wanted to test different placements of the knife and how the handle came out and
the direction that the handled, maybe the cash shadow. Or the light source,
you can always just change one variable or two.
So once I get to the point that I am, that I have all of them laid out, about two minutes each, I go
through and I mark out the ones I know I don't like. I circle the ones that [00:13:00] I think
I wanna work further on which is what I'm doing right here. And then I'll go back to those ones
that I wanna work a little further on and I'll put another three minutes or so into each one.
So my first pass I had eight drawings at about two minutes each, and then I,
then I narrow those down and I come back to the ones that, that I wanted to work a
little bit further and I put another three or four minutes into each of those. Like I said earlier,
I don't want to go too far. I don't wanna start rendering a lot of detail.
I still want them to be simple, abstract shapes. Because that is that's the point
of thumbnailing. I don't want to, to, to get too far into detail and start trying to make
the drawings fancy. I just need to make sure that the light and dark relationships are,
you know, at work that the light source is consistent, that the,
you know, darks and lights are balanced, that they sit well on the canvas or on the body.
You know, if you're drawing this, if you're doing this for a tattoo. So I'll come through,
correct the drawing a little bit if I need to. [00:14:00] Cause I'm gonna use all this
information when I lay out my painting I might push my values a little bit more.
So right here I only have basically a medium gray and the white of the paper.
But but I'll come through and kind of,
and dark in a couple of areas like I am right here. Maybe get another value or two,
maybe push it to three or four total values rather than just the two values that I started
with. And then the last thing I'll do here is I come in and I kinda lightly lay the background
in in an effort to push my my strongest light forward, which is the highlight on the grape.
So when I had that background, super light, it was kind of competing with
the light and the grapefruit. And here I'm pushing it just a little bit further,
making sure that this is what I want. I guess at this point, I thought that this was gonna
be the composition that I went with, but but it ended up not being but most likely I put
this same amount of work into the other composition that I did end up going with.
So I've probably got five or six total minutes in these last couple of And from
here I used this reference and went on and [00:15:00] started blocking in the
basic shapes of my painting. And I had most of my biggest problems
already solved before I even laid paint on canvas. So pretty anti-climactic. I know.
Anti-climactic, climatic, what am I trying to say? Pretty boring stuff. I know. But
that's what Thumbnailing is. Honestly, it's. Putting in a little bit of work on
the front end so that you avoid wasting a lot of time on the back end. There's
really nothing worse than getting six or eight hours into a drawing, especially some big back
piece or sleep and realizing that you were going down the wrong path to begin with,
or that you could have chosen a more dynamic composition or even worse than that,
you get into the actual tattoo and then find that you could have done something better.
So go ahead, put 20 minutes into some thumbnail sketches on the front end,
and it's not really. Right. And what's wrong? It's about what's appealing to
you. Cause you're the one that has to finish the drawing, right? I mean, so you know,
you lay out six thumbnail sketches on an arm and you go and you step back and
you squint and you go, [00:16:00] which of those shapes are the most appealing to me?
There's not necessarily a right or a wrong, there are some basic rules that you might want to follow
as far as the balance between dark and light shapes or flowing with the body, but typ, but,
but ultimately it's just up to what you like, what appeals. And the best way to determine that is
just to continually do these little thumbnails and and make that decision for yourself.
Thank you as always for supporting what we do. I love you each and everyone,
and we'll see you next time on Fireside Technique.