Art Gym Replay: Thumbnails Workshop
Raise your hand if you’ve ever started sketching a page for a book or portfolio piece… and the composition just feels… blah. *Cue both Adam and Katie raising their hands* Maybe you feel like something is missing, or… you feel like it could be more exciting, but you just can’t think of another way to draw the scene.
That’s exactly what this workshop is designed to fix!
In this one hour workshop, Adam Ming and Katie Stack will lead you through an idea generating strategy (complete with a fun spinner game!) that will help you come up with tons of fresh, creative thumbnail compositions. By the end, you’ll have drawn at least 12 thumbnails—quickly and scribbly. This will help you to stop overthinking and start exploring tons of exciting compositions.
Using three pages from Little Red Riding Hood as your prompt, you’ll sketch multiple versions of each scene and then explore how to sequence your favorites thumbnails for engaging and exciting storytelling.
This workshop isn’t just about making one good thumbnail for one good spread—it’s about building the skill of idea generation and creativity for your future work.
What You’ll Learn:
How to quickly generate fresh, creative composition ideas
How to sketch multiple thumbnails for each page without getting stuck
How to choose the strongest thumbnails for effective storytelling and pacing
Tips for avoiding common thumbnail mistakes
How to apply this strategy to real projects (like Katie did in the example below, using the exact Art Gym technique for a real life book project!)
The Benefits:
A downloadable, ready-to-use thumbnails worksheet. Use it for this workshop and in your own projects
A fun, fast-paced strategy for generating strong composition ideas
Time to connect with fellow illustrators in a supportive space
Sharing your work in the gallery and getting inspired
Bonus: Practice! Even if you already use thumbnails, this session is a great refresher (plus, the idea generating game keeps things fun!)
Art Gym Gallery
Enjoy scrolling through the gallery to see some work from Art Gym!
Here’s some work by Abinaya Kamalanathan, RachelBrokenicky, and Adam Ming. Look at the variety and creativity in these thumbnails!
Want your art featured in the gallery? Join the next live session or watch this replay and submit your work. You can showcase your art here:
