Blog

When I first started painting, I never liked going back into a painting I had already started. I suppose because in my early days of learning to draw, we had always drawn from life and once the model left, the experience was over.  My instructors never suggested taking photo references of our models to finish our drawings at home, nor did a model come back for a consecutive pose.  Neither do I remember ever drawing from a still life set up. (Curious, now that I think back to my college days.) The practice of leaving artwork unfinished became my brand, and to this day, I have to fight the urge to leave work unfinished. 

So why do I find it difficult to finish a particular painting? There can be any number of excuses I can find to justify my falling short of the finish line. "I have made too many mistakes to turn back now" is a big one. In this instance, paintings are put aside with the hope that some kind of enlightenment will come along to inspire me to go back and finish at another time. In a blog I wrote last year (http://cmagellen.faso.com/blog/108031/the-life-of-a-painting) I tell the story of a painting I put aside for  years before picking it up again. However, what hinders me the most is that I have too many ideas in my head about what I want to try in my next painting, get excited about it, and become bored with the current one.

I can lose my enthusiasm for a painting after working on it for weeks or months at a time, so one of the solutions I had for this dilemma was to keep more than one painting going at once. "A splendid solution!," I said, patting myself on the back for my brilliance! The plan would be to work on my larger "primary" painting and have a second painting I could jump to when I was getting bored or losing momentum. This solution worked for a while. That is, until I realized the "alternate" painting, though smaller than my primary painting, was still too large, demanding more time to complete. Eventually, my alternate paintings then began to stress me out and started adding to my growing heap of already unfinished work. Not so brilliant after all. Hmpf.

Enter the miniature.

I never intended to do miniatures. I didn't take them seriously and I didn't see the point. I heard artists claim they were a viable solution to a failing art market--smaller canvases being equal to smaller price tags, hence opening the market to more buyers. Maybe. And, although the prospect of selling more art is always a welcome advantage of being creative, what really turned my head to producing miniatures was their size. How small could I paint without being too fussy? A challenge in itself, but I am always up for a challenge.

Besides providing an outlet for experimentation, these little paintings have allowed me to practice new subject matter, or to work on problems I am having with my primary painting. Perhaps I cannot get the form to turn correctly with the colors I am currently using in my primary painting. I have a pile of small panels next to my easel that I can grab to work it out on.

These little paintings are non-threatening in the sense of how much time and expense goes into them. I realized I could order small panels in bulk and just rip through them, trying everything and anything under the sun. I could try new techniques, surfaces, color palettes, subject matter, styles and more. Another advantage I have learned from doing miniatures is being able to copy masterworks without spending copious amounts of time on them. I can zero in on one area of a masterwork that particularly baffles me and work through it. They are also great for doing color and value swatches. When I know there are several days coming up that will not give me as much time to paint as I would like, I can use these little paintings to do short bursts of painting, keeping my paint from totally drying out between painting sessions.

So, for me, miniatures have become great forms of release and learning, and don't have the pressure of  being masterpieces. I can choose to  paint over them, burn them, or use them as Frisbees.  Once in a while, there might even be a surprise in the group, worthy of a frame. Just the mere act of trying is when the magic happens.

What do you love or hate about creating miniature works of art? Or, if you haven't tried it yet, let me know how it is going!