A Tip for Painting Small Pastel Paintings

'Fairytale Forest'              2.5 x 3.5 inches     pastel     ©Karen Margulis

I am getting back into painting minis. I call the small artist trading card size paintings 'mini's'. They are a standard 2.5 x 3.5 inches and they are so much fun to paint. I tend to paint these little guys when I travel and want to bring pastels but don't want my regular 'big' supplies. I also like to paint them when I am very busy with life but still want to paint. I can paint at the family room table and multi task!

But painting small can be a challenge. Especially if you are a detail oriented artist. It is possible of course to get fine detail especially by using pastel pencils but I like to paint in a loose and expressive manner so the pencils don't work for me. I will use my regular full size pastels but these are a bit unwieldy and take practice to get them to make tiny marks. I have a tip to solve the issue!

TIP: Make up a MINI Kit. I take a box lid and line it with a paper towel. I then pull out the little bits and nubs of pastels from my regular boxes and put them in my mini box. You know these bits.....the pastels that have either broken or are well used. They tend to fall in the cracks and get lost in my box so it is better to put them together. Whenever I come across one of these pastel pieces I throw it into the mini box. Now I have a box of assorted pastels that are just the right size to paint minis!

My mini kit also included precut paper, a piece of foam core support board, a pencil and some clear bags and precut foam core backing boards.

My set up when I paint mini pastels

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE PATREON GROUP

This week on Patreon we are working on minis. I have shared videos and demos and plenty of tips. Join us and try the weekly challenge! Pledge just $4 a month for all this and much more!
www.patreon.com/karenmargulis