I love doing thumbnails so much so this was super fun! Great challenge Tiffanie!

Hi all, my name is Julia Kamenskikh, and this is my official entry for #prokochallenge organized by @tiffaniemangart and @prokotv Five tiny paintings, all sized by 2 in x 2 in. Painted with gouache and 3/4 in brush. And I think those are the smallest paintings ever done before. And cannot express how much I’ve enjoyed it. You are forced to simplify and it feels like solving a puzzle to me. I will be definitely doing these again, thank you Tiffany for such a great idea and all organizers for organizing this! All photos are taken by me.

Here is my submission for this brand new year's first #prokochallenge (Are these hashtags required here as well?) for @Tiffanie Mang 's landscape thumbnails! I'll post the references in the reaction on this entry. I am actually proud of them, I had to redo a lot but got somewhere in the end ;-) How did you guys do?

Here are my thumbnails. (The first image is my submission, the others are just my practice versions. I included them because I don’t have source photos.) I learned a TON by doing this. I got a much better handle on water control, and composition simplification by painting these thumbnails over and over until I was happy with the direction. I intended to paint landscapes reminiscent of scenes you might find in my home state of Ohio. In each scene I tried to incorporate a mix of lost and found edges to help evoke feelings of nostalgia and solitude. These are all watercolor on paper. (Daniel Smith pigments, and 140# cold press Arches paper.) These were painted with Escoda Reserva brushes sizes 4 and up. For each thumbnail, I used the same palette consisting of Carbazole Violet, Cerulean, Phthalo Blue, Cobalt Teal, Ultramarine Turquoise, Pyrrol Orange, Prussian Blue, Indanthrone Blue, Quinacridone Rose, Carmine, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Hansa Yellow Light, and Quinopthalone Yellow.

Hey everyone! For those of you who are wondering how to create thumbnails in either digital or traditional mediums, I'm here to share some tips on how you can tackle this challenge! I know it can be daunting painting on such a small 2"x2" canvas. However, if you do enough of these, like I did 100 in April 2020 for PleinApril, I PROMISE you will learn a lot ( I know I did!). Here are my top three favorite revelations you can learn from doing thumbnails: 1) You learn how to see the bigger picture and SIMPLIFY. Often times we get bogged down with details too fast. Working in thumbnails will not let you get all the details you think you need because you simply can't fit so much in such a small surface area! You learn to squint, simplify, and group when needed, three of the most valuable reminders I tell students all the time. 2) You learn to paint more efficiently; because you have less space to cover, it doesn't mean you can just slap on colors carelessly. In fact it's the opposite. Doing thumbnails takes analyzing your photo reference and dissecting the design to figure out what the biggest masses/ main shapes you need to tackle are, and what your overall ratio of light and shadow is. 3) Doing thumbnails are a great precursor to help you figure out the design in your larger painting. If you've done a good job figuring out the main points of your painting and distilling it in your thumbnail, it will serve as great roadmap for your larger painting when you are stuck. For traditional ( regardless of whatever medium you are working in): -My recommendations for working in a 1" flat brush is simply because it prevents you from canoodling in detail. Often times what I find is that when people use a tiny brush, they start stippling in detail, thus losing site of the big picture. This is just my recommendation of course; it is not a requirement. -I like to start off with a light pen sketch. No detail or shading, just lines and contours. I like to use a red LePen, because if it bleeds, it bleeds a nice warm color that often times helps my painting. (versus a sharpie, or black pen.) -I personally like to start off by toning my canvas with a light light wash of yellow ochre. This helps me bring some warmth into the picture from the get go. (You might want to be careful with watercolor, which depends on the white of the paper for your lightest lights!). -From then, I personally like to paint my darker masses first, whether they be cliffs, rocks, tree masses, you name it. If I plan correctly, I can leave some of the tone underneath, and it can effectively serve as the light side of the subject matter I'm tackling, like a rock. AND, if you control and design your shapes correctly, you have effectively painted a picture in perhaps 50 strokes or less. -Keep your subject matter simple! Complicated doesn't always mean better. Readability is what counts. -Always make sure to squint and check if your value structure is working. You can take a picture and turn it black and white on Photoshop or a photo editing app to check. Another tip I have is limiting yourself to 4 -6 colors, the primaries and white. What I like to use: permanent white yellow ochre lemon yellow cadmium red alizarin crimson ultramarine cobalt blue My super stripped down palette: Permanent white lemon yellow alizarin crimson ultramarine The reason I like to strip it down and why I recommend using just the warm and cool versions of the primaries it is that it's easy to get "muddy" colors when you add too many colors to your palette if you don't know how to control them. You can essentially mix all the colors (secondary, and neutral grays) you need with the primaries and white (and black, but I don't use it!) If you would like to know how I tackle thumbnails in gouache, you can check out two short tutorials I have on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecqpVO7tgqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEKTZFK-P_s (sorry for the bad quality of the videos!) You can also watch my live stream with Proko where I demo 4 gouache thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7UoonJxRAo&ab_channel=Proko For digital thumbnails: -For digital, what I recommend is that you lock your canvas at a certain zoom, or control yourself from wanting to zoom in. This will help you not focus on the details and on the relationship of shapes you are putting down. -For my digital thumbnails, I have developed a certain technique where I use the circle and rectangle line tool, the default hard brush (with a taper), and smudge brush. This limitation of tools really helps me focus on the values of the colors I'm putting down, and if my shapes I put down work well to describe the subject matter. ** (I will post a demo on this soon!) -For digital thumbnails. I also like to tone my canvas first with a solid burnt sienna bucket fill. You can add some texture if you wish, but I wouldn't recommend getting too carried away. -Another technique I like to do is paint my painting all in one layer, just like I would when painting traditionally. This forces you to really problem solve, and not rely on control z or the cushion of layers. This is also simply because I hate dealing with multiple layers (Marco Bucci does this too!) If you want to see how I tackle thumbnails, feel free to watch my hour long tutorial on my Youtube, where I painted digital thumbnails on Infinite Painter: -Small is the New Big (workshop with Infinite Painter) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TjSVOGUqyA If you wish to download the template that I used, click below!: Thumbnail Template: https://www.infinitestudio.art/painter/get.php?file=Thumbnails-Template.pntr You can also download my brush pack I used for Infinite Painter: Tiffanie’s Core Essentials Brush Pack https://www.infinitestudio.art/painter/get.php?file=Tiffanies-Core-Essentials.przp And last but not least, please download my FREE PDF- 7 Foolproof Steps to a Better Painting. I hope it will help you with the challenge! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xUNPcU3i9C9wh7yhEX7MASbnH1S4hUdU/view?usp=sharing