Heather asked: “I am just wondering if there are some tricks of the trade about scaling up? So from a sketch to a larger canvas, what should I consider/watch out for?”
When you scale up “mechanically” i.e. measuring or gridding, the overall geometry should of course work out. However, even here there can be issues – we seem to scale up an overall picture space and then make elements within the space smaller than they should be. Let’s say something is a quarter of the size of the picture space – do make sure this element is a fully sized quarter in the larger format.
There are a number of more subtle ideas to consider and this article has some good information: http://painterskeys.com/big-problems-2/
I also talked touched on this issue, in relation to Tom Thomson’s Jack Pine at that workshop in June: https://youtu.be/xQ-IACeZ0-c
Cropping for paint-suitability and size-appropriateness is invariably a good idea. Many photos, even professionally taken photos, do not necessarily make the best compositions in paint. Size can be a factor too. I’ve just completed a full size painting from a smaller painting which I did a few years ago. I actually had to make the figures larger relative to the canvas (essentially re-cropping my earlier work) in order to make the painting look right.
I would almost assume that a photo can be improved in some way – that’s one of the benefits of a composition sketch!
Break-a-Brush!
David