The Big Painting Project has been a feature of the Undergraduate Painting Area since academic year 2007- 8. The project allows students to explore 'large scale' in painting. The project is funded by area project money and has a particular focus on process.

The physical environment of the Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square provides a unique opportunity to have a much larger working space than usual for between 20 and 30 students.

Students are often surprised and healthily challenged by the formal difficulties that arise with the increase in scale, the way that the physical nature and processes of painting are so changed by an increase in physical scale, and by the tremendous exhilaration and excitement of the physical process of painting on this scale.

Discussions and seminars and crits take place during and at the end of the project.

The Big Painting Project was praised by the Undergraduate Painting External Examiner John Strutton in 2012:
'The range of work and ambition for painting to be a progressive and relevant activity was evident throughout the show. Painting, in its most conventional form, is very strong indeed and the success of some of the large scale works must in some part be put down to the development in can experience through opportunities such as the “big painting project”.  With scale often being dealt with by media such as installation and video, in terms of contemporary fine art practice, it is great to see students trying to tackle the potential of this medium in this way.'