Diptych in Progress

I have always wanted to paint bigger pieces, but until recently it hasn't been possible. At the moment, my largest painting is 30"x40", which is the size that will fit in the back of my VW Golf. When bubble wrapped and boxed to ship, it just barely fits in my car. Anything larger would be too big to transport and because of this, I can't really work larger than that. 30"x40" may seem like a large painting, especially for those who work small, but seeing that size hung in a gallery, one would see that it's pretty small. My paintings are usually dwarfed by the enormous walls of the galleries I show in. Placed next to a wall sized painting and my work looks microscopic! 

So what's a girl to do if she wants to increase the size of her work but has certain limitations? Well, I am working on getting a larger car, eventually, but there's the whole having money to pay for it thing that seems to be getting in the way of that solution. So, in the meantime, I will be painting diptychs and triptychs, whenever the composition warrants it. For those of you non-artists out there, I will be using multiple panels to make one painting.

Now, not all pieces will work as a multi-panel piece. The image has to be just right compositionally so that it can work across at least two panels, while each piece of the panel also works on it's own. I think that's important so that the viewer/ purchaser has options as to how the painting is hung. The pieces can be hung connected to each other, or with space in between the panels. 

I started a diptych today, which will total 40"x24" when completed. Each panel is 20"x24".

Panel one.

There is a lot more white space on the bottom of each panel than what is shown. There will also be two more girls on the right side panel. This is still in the underpainting stage AND I forgot to sand the panels before drawing the images on there, so it's all really rough. It's amazing how sanding the panels make a difference!

Both panels together.