Art Lesson #5: Thumbnail Sketches at Hobbiton

Let's take our ink on the road!

Sketching Hobbiton in a few minutes

I recently taught a class on using thumbnails for travel sketching in New Zealand. So this is a bonus just for you all, based on the same ideas in that class, only we’re doing Hobbiton!

If you go to New Zealand, you’ll find that you’re often on the move, and you might be with a tour group, especially for popular attractions like this one. It can be hard to get any sketching done at all.

These sorts of thumbnails are incredibly quick and easy to do, and they make it possible to fill a sketchbook even when you don’t have an hour to yourself every day to draw.

I’m going to show you how to start with pencil and then move on to ink, but I strongly recommend that when you’re doing this while you travel, you choose one or the other. You can do these little drawings in two or three minutes each, then color them later—maybe on the train, sitting around in a cafe, at the hotel that night.

Supply list at the bottom, but as always, use what you have!

Here’s our refer…