Harness the power of sketching to better visualize concepts and capture inspiration in a finished painting.

Like many artists, I’ve found that beginning the painting process with a sketch is key to achieving a successful finish. From loose to more detailed, sketches serve as a starting point for more polished artworks. They can even stand alone as unique expressions unto themselves. It’s an important skill that lets you transfer your design idea onto paper in a fun, fast and effective manner. 

This article is featured in the Winter, 2024 issue of Pastel Journal. Get your copy today!

Why Sketch?

I’ve always valued sketching as a tool for capturing ideas, but it’s so much more than that. Here are some of the ways sketching can benefit your painting process. 

• Warm up. Sketching is a practice that encourages artists to embrace imperfection and enjoy the process of artistic exploration. It’s a great way to kick-start your creative brain. Sketches can be as simple as just a few quick gesture marks. Whether they work or not doesn’t matter—it’s just a sketch after all.
• Discover problems in advance. In the early stages of painting, a sketch can help you detect potential problems and provide the opportunity to make changes, play with ideas and solve any problems before painting.
• Sharpen your observation skills. Whether you sketch from photos or real life, and whether you do quick-and-rough or more carefully detailed sketches, the practice improves your ability to see and render shapes, forms, colors and values more accurately in your artwork. 
• Boost your confidence. Sketching builds confidence in your technique and ability to see the painting process through to completion.
• Generate new ideas. You can revisit your sketchbook and look back over ideas that may be long forgotten. A sketchbook also allows an idea to gestate in your imagination. It can be a handy source of reference for new painting ideas even years later. 

I did a line sketch and a tonal sketch to kick off my painting process for Secrets of the Night (pastel on paper, 12×18). I was very pleased with my value sketch and spent time visualizing the color palette in my mind’s eye. That helped me relax and better enjoy the painting process itself; I just carried the values into my painting. This piece won First Place in the Dakota Art Pastels 2024 First Quarter Competition.  

Types of Sketches

My sketches, which are usually no bigger than a postcard, record my notes on important compositional choices, such as the main distribution of values or colors and the focal point(s). They are simplified overviews of what the final works should look like. I engage in many kinds of sketching to express my plans and ideas. The following examples cover my favorite types of sketches and how I use them as guides for finished paintings.

• Line sketch. All my paintings start with a line sketch. I love beginning this way because it’s simple, quick and spontaneous. This type of sketch relies on the use of lines to create form and structure. The style can be both expressive and precise. It’s often used in gesture drawing to emphasize the essence of a pose or movement of the subject in a few quick strokes.
• Tonal sketch. This is my second-most-used type of sketch. The tonal (or value) sketch is used to plan values, and experiment with light, shadow and contrasts using a range of values on the gray scale. I usually include some elements of compositional sketching in my tonal sketches. I typically use a pencil but charcoal and markers also work.
• Composition sketch. I use this type of sketch to work out my painting compositions and make decisions about the center of interest, perspective and focal point. It can be as simple as a quick line drawing that captures the placement of objects. I find this type of sketch most helpful when planning a painting that depicts multiple subjects.
• Color study sketch. This sketch can be used to plan a color palette and experiment with mood, color harmony and temperature. Simply adding one or more colors to a sketch makes it a color study. Various media can be used and combined when creating a color study, such as colored pencils and watercolor. 

I made three sketches prior to beginning Party of Five Cats (pastel on paper, 13×15): a tiny color study sketch of a turquoise square with an orange circle; a pencil composition sketch of five cats with some orange color; and a blue marker sketch of four cats with colored pencil. Notice how I cropped the latter to have a closer view. Although I felt the orange-turquoise combination worked well in the sketches, I chose a more muted turquoise color for the painting to put more focus on the orange bowl.

From Sketch to Painting

The beginning and the end of the creative process are strongly connected. The preliminary sketch you make serves as the blueprint and lays the foundation for your artwork. Naturally, you want a strong foundation, an accurate blueprint, in order to maximize your chances for a successful result. Keep in mind that a sketch doesn’t have to be pretty; it just needs to be good. A messy sketch can still provide the information you need. Of course, even when starting with a bad sketch, it’s possible to recover, but that usually involves a lot of struggle, extra effort and significant changes along the way.

Use preliminary sketching to work through issues like composition, light, mood, color and value. While in the planning stage, you should closely observe your intended subject. Spend time looking over all your reference photos until you settle on the perfect one. Then, with the concept in mind—and maybe a sketch from life, too—visualize that moment you want to capture. This is a crucial step. Don’t rush it.  

Before I started painting Sleepless Night (pastel on paper, 13×22), I did three sketches: a pencil value sketch with some perspective lines; a line sketch of the cat’s head with black marker; and a more detailed pencil sketch of the cat’s head. The background in the value sketch isn’t that dark because my original plan was to paint an early-evening scene. After asking myself what changes were needed, I decided to turn it into a nighttime scene. I wanted the cat’s eyes to glow in the dark, so I used significantly darker shades in the painting. 

Sketching From Life

Both sketching from reference and sketching from life are valid and have their own benefits. Choosing between the two approaches will depend on your specific goals, preferences and circumstances. I practice both methods. Using a photo is convenient when you find yourself in circumstances where it’s difficult to observe and sketch your subject in real time. For example, I find it helpful to sketch my cat subjects when they’re eating or at rest, but I also take photos to better capture specific poses, settings and lighting situations. 

While photos are useful for capturing fleeting moments, looking at a cat in a photo is not equivalent to observing a cat that’s strutting directly in front of you. Sketching from life leads to a deeper understanding of the subject as you learn to capture the essence of it in the present. That being said, practicing both approaches—and all types of sketching—will help you develop a set of skills that improves your ability to represent your subjects realistically and soulfully. 

I did a composition sketch with perspective lines using a black pen and a nearly dried-out marker as I was planning the composition for Salmon Recipe (pastel on paper, 101/2×22). The sketch helped me better understand the perspective, which allowed me to create an effective sense of depth in the finished painting. I added a couple more cats that were not present in the original sketch) to create a busier scene.

About the Artist

Yael Maimon is an Israeli artist best known for her paintings of cats. Although grounded in realism, her artwork is often impressionist in nature, traditional yet contemporary. She enjoys painting in a variety of media, and her artwork has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in Israel and abroad.