Why Paint Small?

Back in early November, I started a series of mini paintings during my Twitch streams. I’m not entirely sure what sparked it, but something kept pulling me toward these tiny canvases. Maybe it was the simple pleasure of sitting at my desk to paint — something I’ve loved since I was a kid. I used to spend hours building model cars and painting the parts at my bedroom desk.

Large landscapes are doable while sitting, but standing is usually better for the big brush strokes they require. After a while, standing gets uncomfortable, especially when a painting takes hours to complete.

The Practical Reasons for Mini Paintings

There were other reasons the mini paintings series began, even if they weren’t the main push. My larger paintings were piling up. I wasn’t selling many at the time, and doing at least one painting a week meant I was running out of space fast.

Normally I could just take a break from painting, but as a Twitch streamer, I need to produce content regularly. My computer couldn’t handle gaming and streaming at the same time, so art was the only option.

On top of that, I was running out of ideas. My brain wanted to create something new, but I didn’t know what that was. I could’ve kept doing Bob Ross paintings — he has over 400 episodes — but it started to feel like copying instead of creating. My heart wasn’t in it, the fire was fading, and I think my viewers could sense it.

The Spark

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment the spark returned, but I think it started while I was shopping for oil paint. I grabbed a pack of 4×5 inch canvases at Michael’s because they were on sale. But the idea had probably been brewing ever since a fellow Twitch artist began a Lord of the Rings mini painting series. It looked fun. That planted the seed and finding the mini canvases watered it. One day, I finally decided to make it happen.

Being such small size canvases, I decided to initially paint them in acrylics. Small canvases and small brushes made it easy to work with on a small area of the desk. I just put the paint on some palette paper and had a mug of water for washing the brushes. I began by recreating my older paintings in miniature, going in the same order I originally painted them.

Now it may seem contradictory that I was painting my old Bob Ross paintings on small canvases but what made it fun and new was the different medium and the challenges that brings with a small canvas. Also, sitting down at the desk working on something small reminded me of when I was young and building model cars.

The Challenge of Mini Paintings

I’d painted with acrylics before, but only in monochrome. Recreating Bob Ross landscapes in acrylic, originally done in wet‑on‑wet oil, was a whole new challenge.

The first hurdle was the sky. Without any acrylic mediums, getting smooth coverage or blending multiple colors was tough. Spritzing the canvas with water helped, but thin acrylic layers are still tricky to blend. And acrylic dries fast, on the canvas and on the palette. I know there are slow‑drying mediums, but of course I didn’t have any.

I also had a limited palette: just a basic 12‑color acrylic set from the art store. Nothing fancy. Even so, I managed to match the tonal values of my original paintings pretty closely. It was quite fun as well. A few pieces in, I added Hooker’s Green and Raw Umber to expand the palette and deepen my shadows.

My brushes were nothing fancy either — just a basic acrylic brush set. The angle brushes were perfect for trees, the bristle brushes added great texture, and the round brushes handled bushes and clouds.

Return to Oils

Not all the mini paintings I did were painted in acrylics. There were some I tried in oil as well. If a sky had multiple colors to blend, I did it in oil most of the time. The northern lights mini painting definitely had to be done in oils. I have seen some spectacular norther lights type paintings done in acrylic but I haven’t figured that out yet.

The Surfaces

I painted on a mix of surfaces:

• 2×2 canvas boards. I glued magnetic strips to the back making mini fridge art!
• 3×3 and 4×4 inch stretched canvases with their own mini easels
• 4×5 inch stretched canvases
• canvas board magnets in circles and squares. These had magnets already integrated so no gluing required.

Scroll through the gallery and take a look. It’s a fun little collection.

This mini paintings series was a fun creative detour, but eventually I hit that point where it all started to feel a bit repetitive. So I took a breather. I’m not sure if it was the medium or the paintings I was doing. I haven’t quit doing them entirely but I did take a little break. I’m still going to do them from time to time. Mini paintings are the perfect item to sell on my Etsy shop. If you want to get your hands on any of these little gems, they are available in there.

Be sure to follow my Twitch channel to see these come to life. Following my social media will ensure you see these little works of art as they are completed.

Happy Painting!