Admittedly remiss in posting to this page, I find myself doing a large commission of buffalo, 40.5" x 52.5" and thought I would show the process I use in planning a painting of this size.

After doing several small pencil sketches and a small color sketch in oil being accepted by the client, I started on my large canvas.  I had it mounted on 1/2 " gatorboard rather than stretching it, partially because of the unusual size but also to avoid any slack in the finished canvas as a result of a fluctuation in humidity. 

First I drew the main buffalo establishing the size and placement determined in the smaller sketch using the armature of the rectangle.  I then took some brown paper and tore shapes to represent buffalo and moved them around the canvas to decide size and placement of the "minor players" in the painting.

Then I began painting the buffalo.  Tomorrow I will continue on the buffalo and hopefully begin to get some paint in the landscape. I can already tell I want to move the buffalo to the left of the main buffalo to the right a little.