Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Does size Matter?

It's a question that my friend Marsha and I have been talking about over breakfast in the morning on Tuesday. Why is it that a piece of art works at certain sizes and not at others?

Here are two examples:


Pumpkin by Andrea Wilson, lithograph print. This tiny kitty is perhaps 4" tall and sits in the middle of a sheet of beautiful creamy paper. Part of the charm of the print is the tiny size of the kitty on this large sheet of paper.






Ok. It's not Christmas...I know that.



I did quite a few of these Santas for Christmas as cards to family and friends. He was a hit with everyone that received one. Made frame shops quite a bit of money!






I also did a few larger ones for the Inner Bean and for the Gallery on the Row which I was a partner in. Not nearly as charming...

Was it the fact that they were done in acrylics or that they were MUCH bigger!

Another thought on size. Saw a lovely airplane oil painting last Night at the North Augusta Art Guild. Just a beautiful painting EXCEPT one plane had a big yellow nose. It was the focal point in the painting big yellow round....was it out of proportion or did it just not translate well from the picture he used to paint it because it was now huge?

As I said does size matter?  What do you think?


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think absolutely size matters, as you have demonstrated. also because I have tried to make crazy quilt vests and I can't get the size of the patches right, yet, but I saw one the other day on a QA blog that looked perfect, so there is a "right" size that works. I just have to figure it out.
Marilyn

Cathy Perlmutter said...

Love your work. Good question. Size does matter. I'm working up my nerve to make something huge. Haven't dared yet!

Tanya Brown said...

Sure, size absolutely matters. It can invite us to look closer, in the case of the kitten and the Santas. It can also convey larger-than-life impact or a sense of intimacy.

I had an experience similar to your Santa experience a few years ago. I made a design which was quite satisfactory at 14" square, then enlarged it to about 4' on a side. The larger design was a flop. The design which looked so bold in the smaller size merely looked insipid in the larger size.

I wonder if the issue with the yellow nose on the airplane was simply that the hue was bright, saturated compared to the rest of the picture? In other words, so different that it couldn't help but stand out, perhaps offputtingly.