Planning for a Larger Oil Painting

I don’t typically plan much when I paint – I prefer just finding a reference or concept, throwing some textured paper onto my easel, and diving right in. However, I was given some large canvasses, and so I started thinking about what I might want to do with them. My go-to painting surfaces are 12″ x 12″ or 9″ x 12″ textured paper by Strathmore, which is nice for many reasons – they’re easy to store, not to painful on my supplies, and large enough to give me room to work. But with a 24″ x 30″ canvass, I figured I’d need to do some planning for a larger oil painting. I decided a practice piece was in order! That it might make sense to try out a possible scene or configuration that could be expanded for the larger surface.

I kept this one a bit simpler than I want to in the larger piece; this is just one subject with a boat, but the larger one would feature multiple people in the area. This portrait study was painted on 12 X 12 oil paper and was my 252nd overall. I’ll follow my standard format here, which is to share an image of the painting, the Instagram time lapse, and some verbiage specific to the piece. Then, I’ll embed the YouTube discussion video, including another brief writeup on the topic, materials used, and some other hopefully useful information. I’ll wrap the post up by sharing the YT Shorts time lapse and some other similar painting videos.

Shop link related to this piece:

• 
  Woman at Lake with Feet in the Water, Giclee Art
  $85
  Buy via Etsy

This practice run I think went decently overall. Part of the inspiration for the subject came from a series of previous paintings I’d done of a woman sitting on a dock – I was hoping to repeat some of the shadow and natural figure positioning from the original one a couple of years ago. I didn’t quite get the same impression from this one, but I do think it worked in a few specific ways. I really like the use of shadows, and the ripple effect in the water is satisfying. I also really like the composition and nature in the background, which I think makes this a victory in terms of planning. A larger painting surface will benefit details in the main subject, but also allow for additional subjects around in the foreground and background.

Some other topics explored in the embedded video: Discussion on the materials (my usual paper and these canvasses I got my hands on), more thoughts on this practice painting, and changes I anticipate for the larger one. I do have to place a huge asterisk on this entire situation though – this video and painting were done way back in May 2025, six months prior to this post, and I still haven’t started the larger one. In fact, I haven’t even really considered it! Truth be told, I’m more than a little intimidated about painting something so huge. And I know it will take a significant amount of time to work on it, which I don’t really have a surplus of. So…hopefully some day, but not today.

Here are some additional details of the video I shared on YouTube, including materials used and some other information. I’ll also embed the Shorts video, although it’s kind of redundant to the Instagram Reels post, as I typically just share the same edited vertical time lapse on both platforms. The main video I’ve embedded is around the usual amount, and is similar in format and presentation to some of the others I’ve done (also linked after the timestamps).