Fact: Different sizes of canvas have their own set of challenges. There may not even be a difference in the time taken to finish painting a small canvas or a big one. Miniatures are tiny, but certainly don’t take only few minutes to finish! (And you’ll never get a miniature done if you don’t have a steady hand and sharp eye.)
Whether you paint large or small depends not only on the subject -- some subjects simply demand a particular scale -- but also the effect you want to create. An enormous landscape will dominate a room in a way a series of small canvases never could.
If your budget for art materials is limited, you may be tempted to use small canvases because you think you’ll need less paint. The same if you stress about wasting art materials because a painting might not turn out right (see Art Myth No.3). If you’re worried about expenditure on art materials and find it inhibiting your painting, consider using student’s quality paints for studies and for blocking in initial colors, and using artist’s quality for the later layers.
Whistler produced numerous small oils (some as tiny as three by five inches), which one collector described as "superficially, the size of your hand, but, artistically, as a large as a continent".
"Can you believe it is not at all easier to draw a figure of about a foot high than to draw a small one? On the contrary, it is much more difficult." -- Van Gogh
Read more: Artists on whether large or small paintings sell more.
