If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know I tend to paint small. For example, 6×8 inches is a very common size for me to use. While this has worked pretty well for me up until now, I’ve been frustrated lately by trying to fit so much into such a small area. I’m taking this as a very clear sign that I’m ready to paint larger.

Over the last few months, I’ve been gradually working my way up to some larger sizes. There has been a bit of a learning curve to painting larger. Most notably, I’ve struggled with mixing enough paint. I had to upgrade to using a larger palette knife, and that helped a lot. Even with a larger knife, I still find myself constantly running out of paint, forced to stop painting to mix again and again. It astounds me how much paint it takes to cover a large canvas.

The next thing I’ve struggled with is brush size. It seems so obvious that a larger canvas demands a larger brush, but I just feel more comfortable using a smaller brush. Using a larger brush sucks up the paint from the huge piles I mix surprisingly fast. It’s an adjustment I’ll get used to, but I’m still adjusting.

The amount of time it takes to finish a large painting is substantially longer. I had gotten used to finishishing a painting in an hour or two and being able to work wet into wet for the entire painting. However, working larger means the painting is broken up over several sessions and subsequent areas have already dried or gotten tacky making it impossible to work back into that area without painting over it. I’m now looking into different mediums to slow the dry time of my paint so I can continue to work wet into wet.

Finally, since it takes me days instead of hours to finish a painting, I can get in my head about it. With a small painting, I don’t stress about it if it doesn’t turn out, but with these large paintings I find myself stressing and overthinking the whole process. I’ve started planning my paintings more thoroughly and that is helping, but I can’t help but be in my head. That means that I have a hard time jumping back into a painting. I’ll start it then let it sit for days or even a week without touching it because I don’t want to mess it up or I’m intimidated by what to work on next.

That all isn’t to say I’m not enjoying working larger, I am. I’ve absolutely loved working larger lately and I love the paintings I’ve produced so far. You’ll be seeing more large work from me in the future. I’m currently working on a 24×36 canvas which is a repaint of a 6×8 painting I did earlier this year and have a handful of large paintings planned.