I love large-scale work and buy large panels and canvases all the time... and then I chicken out. It’s like, once it gets past 3 feet, the pressure is ON!
Today I started a 6’x4’ to actually do what I always say I want to: paint BIG. How I started:
1) I started by drawing a sketch of my reference photo in a sketch book.
2) I then took a picture of the sketch with my phone and used a projector to project it onto my gessoed panel. **Don’t judge about the projector- I am awesome with scale and proportion in smaller work... but bigger- Oy I tend to lose all sense of space when I am reaching on my tip toes and have my face right up to the panel.
3) I used a lighter color blue sharpie to jot my sketch onto the surface. (Black sharpie is too hard to cover up... since I have a lot of white tennis clothes, and light blue is an undertone, it was a good choice).
4) I started painting in the larger background areas. I used non oil-based paint from the hardware store for the large areas... literally sample CANS of room paint (plan ahead- for big work it is SO much more cost effective).
5) My 5 year old is coming home from school right now, so— to be continued another day!