Big and Small

Exploring Scale in Painting

Here’s a series of acrylic paintings on canvas where I work with scale and proportion.

I like playing around with big space in a small area.

These are abstracted landscape, rich in texture and colour.

Size:  Small – the largest is 10″ x 12″.

Proportion:   The compositions in these pieces have large open areas juxtaposed with areas of detail.

Surface:  Each have areas of texture and areas of flat colour.

Materials:  My favorite paint products are made by Golden.  They’re constantly updating their line.  There’s always new products to explore and their pigments are high quality and reliable.

Pumice and molding pastes create great texture.  I develop small mark making areas using one of my favorite materials, graphite.  I’ll sometimes gouge into the surface as it dries, or rub graphite into the drying paint.

These small pieces stand alone quite well.  And I can also use them as maquettes for much larger works.

It can be daunting to take on a large canvas.  It’s a big investment of materials and time.  So painting small, then taking it big, is a straight forward way to approach a larger work.

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