Create a Higher Quality Painting

I hear students talking about how they like working large. There is nothing wrong with working on a large canvas, but there are not a lot of painters that can work large and keep the energy high throughout the painting. Don’t paint large just for the sake of it being large or asking more money for it. If you can pull it off, great! But, from experience, I have seen many paintings on large canvases that should’ve been smaller and there could’ve been a lot more energy placed into it. Paintings are not measured by size, even though a larger painting might have more of a “visual” impact, that is not the point. The point is you have beauty, proper drawing, design, values, color. These things need to be there in the painting as they are what matter. One brushstroke on say a 8 x 10 is equal to 4 brushstrokes on something bigger like a 24 x 30. Not many painters can pull that off.

There is no reason to paint large just for the sake of it. You should be a fairly decent judge of the quality of the painting. Pick a range of sizes that produces quality. I see many large paintings where they painter still needs to grow in their fundamentals (design, value, color, drawing). You don't want to look back and wish you hadn’t painted a certain scene so large that it ruined the quality of it. It is much easier to control a smaller canvas when you don’t have as much experience. This is mainly for artists who are still working on those fundamentals.

“I have seen many paintings on large canvases that should’ve been smaller and there could’ve been a lot more energy placed into it.”

Painting larger does not make it better . It is like saying putting a nice frame on a slow-quality painting will make it better. It won’t help it. The painting HAS to be there. There is nothing wrong with painting larger, but it is not something a beginner should start with. The energy is hard to keep throughout those large canvases when comparing it to small canvases.

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