Early Spring on the Bench Trail

12" x 16" Oil on Canvas Panel

Often I'll return to favorite spots to paint again and again, and the paintings always look different. This location along the bench trail was painted just a few weeks ago on a little 6" x 8" panel. You can read about that here. Last week I returned with a 12" x 16" canvas panel and painted it again. That painting is shown above. The widely different sizes effect the appearance of the finished paintings in more ways than just their apparent size, and each has it's own particular qualities. It's hard for me to say just why, except that the smaller paintings appear "looser" and have what I call a sort of "gem-like" quality, while the larger paintings might seem less loose (although they're painted with bigger brushes) and are more atmospheric. I enjoy painting both large and small for their own reasons.