Size Does Matter!

My plein art work lately has been done on boards of an unusual size: either 10 x 5 or 12 x 6.  This long vertical or horizontal shape makes me look harder for an interesting design when outside...and I was tiring of the standard 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 boards.  My thought was also that once I got into the studio I could do some larger work from my favorite pieces.  The format for blowing this up, so to speak, would be 24 x 12.  Or one would think....

Here's the River of Grass I previously shared done on location in the Everglades.  Something about the day and the colors made me want to paint it again, larger.  I purposely did not have the original in the same room...I was feeling more abstract when I approached the 24" high x 12" wide blank canvas and I hestitated to stifle any crazy urges that might come to light. 

Here's the larger piece, titled Graceful River of Grass, from the Everglades.  The fact that both of these are printing on the computer as the exact same size just does not do either of them justice.  It is hard to feel any impact from the size of the work and I, for one, believe that size does matter!  Sometimes when I enlarge something it loses its mystery and delicateness and likewise, in a very small piece it is hard to get the detail that some compositions call for.

Here's another example"

This piece in reality is a square format, 6" x 6".  It sold and someone recommended that I paint it again, much larger.  So I went to my old standby canvas of 24 x 12 and did it again:

Because it was a much more narrow format the composition had to change quite a bit.  Since the first one was much smaller it did not seem to need as much greenery in it...but this is really only obvious when you see the two pieces in their actual sizes.

I guess all this explanation comes as last week a friend asked me if I could repaint a small piece I had done but in a much larger size and shape.  The answer, of course, was yes AND no.  And maybe now you understand why.

Cindy