Giant formats

I am a small format artist. I like doing art on paper small enough that I can cover its whole spread by swivelling my elbow. There are some obvious limitations, when the tools are not fine enough to create the desired detail. I noticed that in a recent series of cat paintings when nothing was fine enough for whiskers (of course they can be left out at a distance. But I wanted whiskers, and it was hard to do), or when wanting drips that appear enormous on the canvas because their physical size overwhelms the painting. Working on formats that no longer fit the room is tricky. Also, storing large formats is much harder, growing to the second power instead of doubling at twice the size. And finally, the eternal question of: do large paintings even sell when collectors only have that much space on the wall?
There are few exceptions to this preference, even though I find myself drawn to the larger formats lately. I may draw, with ink or charcoal, on sizes around 50×70cm, which is what I can also still store relatively easily, paintings of that category being rarer. On occasion, a client will ask for larger, making sending the package all that much more nerve-wracking because no delivery people like hauling furniture-sized cartons.

This 120×80cm canvas painting of a wolf in the creek was commissioned. I even created a faithful colour study on a smaller canvas; for the final, I had to work on the floor, shoo the cats away regularly, and sit on garbage bags I had cut open to protect the carpet. It was the first painting I successfully used sponge brushes on for actual painting. Finally, the stretchers were dismantled and sent along with the rolled canvas in a huge carton. It all arrived safely.

Another commission to create "as large as possible" a landscape based on a photograph taken by the client and then add elk to the lake in the foreground. The format I used was 140×100cm; the first canvas I ordered arrived with broken stretchers, and I ordered a second with my initial drawing faintly printed on from my print supplier. I propped the canvas up against my work table and worked in sections. This one too was dismantled and sent to arrive just fine.

The largest piece I did for myself was this drawing for the Inktober prompt "Dig", at 100×75cm on packing paper because the crumpled look was desired. I took it out on the porch and threw everything dirty at it, spattered ink, coffee, tea, salt on it, mistreated the edges and folded it a hundred times with a bonefolder to give the impression of age. I even ripped a part and sewed it back together. The drawing itself was created with dip pen nibs and a bamboo pen using several made-up alphabets for the writing.