a thumbnail sketch

thumbnail sketch

1. A small picture that presents a smaller version of a larger image or proposed image. Before fully redesigning the layout of the office, the interior designer provided me with a thumbnail sketch of his initial plans.
2. A short description or preview. Class, each of you will need to submit a thumbnail sketch of your essay topic for my approval.
See also: sketch, thumbnail
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a thumbnail sketch

a brief or small picture or description. The manager gave a thumbnail sketch of her plans. The student wrote a thumbnail sketch of his project.
See also: sketch, thumbnail
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • thumbnail
  • thumbnail sketch
  • be the (very) image of (someone)
  • be the image of somebody/something
  • on brand
  • superimpose
  • superimpose (someone or something) on(to) (someone or something
  • superimpose on
  • image
  • high-res
References in periodicals archive
Written by award winning children's author Donna McDine, "Powder Monkey" is a thumbnail sketch of the impressment experience of 12-year-old Tommy Kitt who was taken by force with his older brother from his parents' farm by a Royal Navy press gang to serve as a powder monkey and ship boy in a battleship at sea.
This made the task of visually mapping out each spread, in the form of a thumbnail sketch, a lot easier.
Reviewing notes from Chekhovas notebooks, Tom observes that aeach is a thumbnail sketch, a moment reduced to the simplest particle of itselfa[bar]each of these small handfuls of words began expanding into a story the size of a universea[bar]a Tomas own notes show how seemingly simple sketches of life balloon into fictive realitiesapeople and places with full-bodied stories and motivations.
Burt gives a thumbnail sketch of the person's life and work, along with the reason why he or she was selected.
Paul, Minnesota which has a thumbnail sketch of the famous comic artist, born in St.
Johnson's Washington gives general readers, students, and scholars a thumbnail sketch of our first president.
He described it as having pokey holes and drew a thumbnail sketch.
A valuable feature of this book is the "Editor's Note" at the beginning of each debate, which serves as a thumbnail sketch introducing each selection.
A thumbnail sketch of Irish civil servants as friendly, laid back but very astute is patronising indeed.
A thumbnail sketch of each project follows, with more detailed overviews in the Appendix.
The following profiles give a thumbnail sketch of how multimedia hardware and software are being used in three districts around the country.
THE Sunday Mercury article 'Breeding ground for fanatics' - a thumbnail sketch of Birmingham's Muslim youth - presented a false image by focusing only on a tiny part of this community.
This is a thumbnail sketch of Randolph Trumbach's first volume of an ambitious and sustained exploration of sexuality in eighteenth-century London.
So his method of contending with the issues in his book, while incorporating statistics where appropriate, is to give a thumbnail sketch of an individual's theories (Foucault, Derrida, Bloom, deMan -- you name it) that is marvelously clear, and then to show how someone else took a bit from here, a bit from there, and moved "forward" (though the reader is often left wondering about the direction, as Kernan wishes).
In "Our Place in the World" students are asked to practice using the following four questions as they seek information about their own work (a membership flag collage and a thumbnail sketch of that collage) and about an ice Age painting and Sioux parfleche: 1) What can I learn about how the reproduction (or thumbnail sketch) is different from the original artwork?