Tight Sketches

The question of what is a tight sketch is often asked by young artists. The tight sketch is exact blueprint you will base your final image on. 

YOU DON’T WANT YOUR HOME BUILT WITHOUT A BLUEPRINT!!!

In the design process, we usually begin with mind maps and thought trees to get our ideas. Once we have finished our mental exploration, it is important to visually explore our ideas. The initial visual explorations are called thumbnails or thumbnail drawings.

Thumbnail drawings are quick gestural sketches that are meant to get our ideas on paper. These usually are imperfect, hastily drawn images taking no longer than 5 minutes that allow the artists to quickly see how their ideas are forming. Thumbnails sketches also inform the artist on what exactly they need to research for their final product.

The difference between a tight sketch and a thumbnail is that tight sketches can take up to an hour or even longer. At this point, the artist should have amazing reference that they are testing out. The composition of the piece should have been already decided based upon the thumbnail work. 

After a tight sketch you can explore colors.

So, all the elements of design are pretty much decided, what is important is to see what the components are going to look like together. Even more important, the artist is going to test the value. Without testing the light sources the final blueprint for the final image will be for nothing. No amount of color will save bad value. The tight sketch is the key to a successful final image.