Inspiration Fridays! Playing Small?
Playing Small?
It’s not the size of the painting that matters, it’s how it looks on the wall.
“When I paint, the Sea Roars. Others Splash about in the bath” – Salvador Dali
I love to paint big! Maybe it’s just the artist’s version of having a big truck, but it feels great to scale it up. A big painting does make a big impression, but before I take out the big canvases, it’s important to first make sure that I’ve changed my mindset from painting little to going big.
A big canvas just offers more space to fill with paint. What really matters is how we fill that space. If our little paintings are poorly composed, their larger siblings’ flaws will be that much more obvious.
I’ve painted hundreds of studies and I’ve realized that it can be those tiny compositions that hold the keys to creating larger masterworks pop.
How can we make our smaller paintings bigger without losing the energy?
One of the most common issues I see when enlarging work is a tendency toward filling that larger space with even more detail. Instead of making the ideas larger, only the canvas grows, and we continue to paint at the same scale. We’re still using tiny brushes to tell our story.
The way I’ve turned this thinking on its head is by using larger brushes on smaller canvases. Painting with a big brush on a small canvas forces us to make big decisions. How much can we convey with as little information as possible? When we distill our paintings down into a few simple shapes, the impact of those shapes grow exponentially bigger.
When you start with big shapes and dynamic compositions, the rest of the painting can often just fall into place. Try painting a few 5″x7″s with a one-inch brush. Can you make a strong painting without getting stuck in the details? You can!!