Tiny Art Studio

Let’s tackle one of life’s major questions: Why are tiny things so darn adorable?

One of my earliest memories involves setting up my 1990’s Barbie Dream House, complete with tiny furniture and an elevator with a small motor. Barbie had everything a little girl could ask for, and more… all at 1:6 scale! I found her accessories amazing because you could escape into a pretty, tiny version of the real world!

This idea of this magical, scale-down life has carried me through to today in 2021. After nearly a year of managing the impact of Covid-19 with the rest of the world, I longed to visit an art gallery or museum. Just like a Barbie dream home, great masterpieces draw us in with the tiny details in the big picture. Artists like Chuck Close uses countless numbers of small colorful dots to create huge life-like portraits. You can only see the dots while viewing the artwork close up. Such care and attention to detail is displayed in the halls of museums and galleries! It's hard to forget that Leonardo DaVinci created enormous life-like works like "The Last Supper" with the start of one tiny, skilled movement of the artist's hand. Painting is magical - the tiny details all add up to an illusion of people, places, and things. I missed spending the whole day at the museum and imagining the artistic process of these great painters!

I thought to myself, “How could I bring this specific artistic experience into the safety of home, while also sharing the experience with other people?” This is when the idea for Tiny Art Studio was created! I had handcrafted a 1:12 scale art studio model a few years ago but I had never created any original artworks to fill the walls! The art studio room was designed to the scale of my (then) six-inch bearded dragon. I touched up the room model and started to gather the supplies to stretch some custom miniature canvases!

I grabbed my Fiskars scissors, cut a square of scrap canvas from a regular-sized canvas. I also measured and cut a tiny piece of cardboard to “stretch” the canvas around. Et voila, I had the perfect surface to begin to paint! Using a tiny brush and a very steady hand, I recreated a one-inch version of “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh. It was so amazing to put myself in the shoes of my favorite artist while using tiny, delicate brushstrokes for my version of this flowing nighttime masterpiece.

I recorded the painting process using my phone and posted the process video on social media. It instantly received hundreds of likes and comments with people amazed at the amount of detail I managed to capture at such a small scale. I immediately felt the connecting power of art and creating that I had been missing during quarantine.

I have been busy cutting and stretching additional adorable blank canvases to prepare for even more masterpieces. Each time I complete a new piece, I feel so satisfied to add another work to the tiny studio wall. Since I began, I have created over 50 detail-rich paintings for the Tiny Art Studio and I am so excited to continue to share more tiny art! There is a large audience of art enthusiasts and fellow painters who are also missing the museum and gallery experience. It has been wonderful to provide a "little" (no pun intended) entertainment and joy by sharing these intricate painting process videos.

So, why are tiny things so darn adorable?

Because looking at tiny things makes us see familiar things with a new perspective. And isn’t that the most magical part of life!