Framing Your Art Work

frames
Thank you, Osso, for a wonderfully practical thread. I've got a bunch of paintings to frame. About 8 have been recently framed (some with glass and matting, others will simple frames). My larger works (24 X36, 24X30) have yet to be framed, if at all. I'm sure this thread will give me ideas for decisions I must make.

Hi guys!

My Mom (Misti) is a wonderful 'closet' artist. Eighty percent of the paintings in our home are her originals. They are all wood-framed, which suit the paintings, because Mom uses the entire canvas.

Should she ever change to painting smaller scenes, I would enjoy matting them with borders that accentuate the painting and covering them with non-reflective glass.

I need to kick Mom's butt in gear to paint again.....it's been a while.

Most people I know who do watercolors frame with a surrounding mat of something like 2 or 2 1/2 inches, put them in a frame of their material choice, and .... if they are selling them as the artist, they use regular glass. The frame will be relatively low priced, and chosen to not compete with but if anything enhance the work. The framer will keep the paper away from the glass this way; if there isn't a mat, then some kind of spacer will be added to keep the glass from sitting right on the paper.

Depending on what the work sells for, some people pay close attention to the framing stock. One framer in our area has an impeccable eye for just the right level of ornateness and color of the wood and you can tell work framed by him right away...the work and the frame "sing together".

I framed a photo in an antique frame I had recently, and that worked out well, as the really ornate old frame and that particular photo went together amazingly well. Usually I don't like ornate with a photo at all, and often prefer just a minimal effort with plexiglass or glass with small metal clips. Anyway, on this use of the old frame, the shop next door to us added a plastic strip spacer for me, and sold me a piece of conservation glass (I think it was) which has uv resistance and less glare than regular glass and doesn't present the sort of matte look that nonglare glass does. I cannot afford the next step up, which is museum glass, which I gather is the best available.

On oil and acrylic paintings, I have some more opinions to throw out, just my own view of right now. I'll post that in another post so I don't lose this one with my erratic computer...back later.

People can play with varying the mat size, and where the painting would be positioned within a custom mat, and with the paint or stain color on the frame. I have my own biases on frame color, rarely liking a white frame, and being careful with too dark a stain or paint.

I have to run out, might not be back on my own take on oil/acry painting framing til manana.

For most of my work i have a framer who does an excellent job and I get a great volume discount.. A personal quirk for me, I dont like mitred corners, so Ive found a catalog that hawks frames with corner blocks (some plain, others looking Arts and Crafts,) Therefore, I have most of my frames done with a faux painted surface and with corner blocks. The real creative part I let to the framer, she has an excellent eye for matching or complementing color. I usually use double mats of cotton archive. and UV glass. I agree that non-glare glass robs much of the life from my work. I rely on a lot of contrast.

I rarely do acrylics , but when I do, Ive handled them as oils.For all my oils , I have chosen from among only three pattern frames which appear unified when two or more of my pics hang together, They are pattern ornate frames I learn these little lessons that frames wont MAKE a painting, but they can sure take away from them. Ive seen one person shows in which the artist had, apparently, left the framing go till the last minute. The result was an overall "trailerpark" look to an otherwise good collection of art.
Most artists I know, look at frames as a necessary evil, I look at them as a final way to jack up the quality of my work. Im not ashamed to admit that marketing begins with the belief that all work must be enhanced for display.

The master , to me, of great frame jobs is the (now dead) Rockport Artist, Emille Gruppe. He made his frames and washed them with a verdegris over a gold leaf. All his frames were of 2 or 3 types, and they give his little and large works a unifying context that sez these works were produced in New England during the 1940s.

Oh yeh, matz. To me the old rule of producing the mat with a claerance of 2 3/4 " at the top, and 3" at the bottom is religious dogma. I am convinced that the illusion of off center matting gives a painting a more balanced look.

I have rejected an entire batch of paintings (I was doing a 3 artist show in New Hope) and the framer was chosen by the gallery(I guess they had a sweetheart deal) Well, the matz were cut so that there was almost a tear in each corner. I hollered that this was unacceptable and I was summarily kicked out of the show (one of the other artists then dropped out in solidarity and we came back to the table and made nice so the show went on) However, I made the point that my matzand frames are integral to my work and not an "add on". I am very control freakie about all my work, although, when I have a good framer who has earned my confidence, I let her tell me what she thinks is the best look and she puts me in my place a lot.
This is an ultra important topic for all the artists osso, Im glad you brought it up.
my question,to all the artists who use matz: Do you choose mat colors that complement or "repeat the colors of your art? (I assume that when you use color matz , you always make double matz with an inner one showing some version of white. (I use my double mat as the spacers that osso mentioned)

One of my favorite framing projects was in presenting some 30x40 photographs. I didn't want a regular frame but something a bit more industrial looking.

I bought some huge canvases and painted them the color of the wall but used a different brush stroke to make it stand out in a subtle way. I sandwiched the photo between the canvas and plexi - and voila! a cool, inexpensive frame.

Farmerman, I agree with you on having the bottom bigger on the mat.
I also have seen some photo shows - for example a recent one at the Morris Graves museum, where there was a mistake in the Request for Entries and the subsequent photo sizes were therefore unusually small to fit in with the maximum mat size - where the photo took up much less of the space than usual relative to the mat size, and the work looked good. Sometimes I think that can get a little cute, with a tiny photo and a great big mat, but at least some of these framings with bigger mat proportion looked good to me.

On framing oils and acrylics. Well, I could go on and on.

I haven't worked on canvasses stretched over thin board, or with masonite or wood as base for decades, so I haven't thought about how to frame them much. I'd probably attach them to something to give depth at the side...and then frame the way I usually do.

Let me ramble on about paintings done on canvas around stretchers, custom made or otherwise, for a bit.

Before I do that, there is another way to hang a large canvas that I really like, which is to have a non painted edge to it - perhaps it was originally painted on a big stretcher frame, or masked otherwise, and then taken off - one can use grommets at the top and hang from hefty screwhooks, and either weight the bottom, or use pins. This is not quite as easy as it sounds as the grommets and the hooks on the wall need to align well to avoid a curve in the "hang". By large canvas I mean really large, like 6 x 9 feet....

I am going to post this since I continue to have some kind of crash phenom with my computer.

Once in a while for my smaller canvasses, I buy a good looking frame readymade or custom made. Readymade is tricky, I mostly don't like the frames well enough; to me there tends to be something a little cheesy about them. I don't happen to like the frame right up to and over the edge of the painting without some spacing fairly wide band of linen or silk (although I do like it without that sometimes), and those cloth bands that come with readymades usually annoy me.

On the other hand, one customer spent a whole big bunch of money framing two of my paintings with frames that did what Farmerman said, bring out the best in the painting, stunning me really with how good they looked. Those two frames really worked with those particular not very abstracted landscape paintings. They involved a gold leafed bead line right at the painting edge, then a three and a half inch coved band covered in a washed silk to match one color in the painting (pale gray green, for example) and then a fairly ornate outer frame of about two inches. Zowie.

But usually I prefer lath frames that I make myself and these just butt up to the painting edge. I agree again with Farmerman (I typed Framerman first...)
in that I too don't really like mitered corners. I know most people do. I like the corners he is talking about, with inset blocks, but don't do those myself.

On the smallest paintings, I just use pine lath (1/4" or 5/16) sideways, and nail it into the canvas stretcher sides, using what I think of as California Bungalow post and beam corners... well, overlapping at the top and the sides overlapping the bottom piece.

With paintings 30 x 40 or larger, I use 1/2" x 2 1/2" pine boards, which I can only find at one lumberyard here, in the same manner. I am really happy with these. I tend to paint to the edge, and these let you see it. Plus they hold the painting with nice heft. I usually give the boards a couple of coats of varnish, but sometimes don't. I don't buy the wood with one curved edge since I prefer the sharp edge and don't miter.

All personal preference.

This matter of using 2 1/2 " boards around a canvas is easier if you use thicker stretchers than you tend to find on the cheaper readymade canvases. I guess if I was doing it with the typically 5/8" deep canvas stretchers, I might add a base stretcher so that I'd have a place to put more nails. Or if not a whole underlying stretcher, some corner pieces.
Just riffing here on that.

Boomerang, that sounds similar to what a friend of mine does with his paper paintings. He doesn't have much of the underlying canvas show, just the sides and a wee bit of edge, very wee....perhaps even less than an eighth inch.

In his case he paints the canvasses a very similar color to the main color in his abstract paintings. His painting colors are pretty subtle though, not sure how it would work with brighter colors.

These of his do look beautiful!

Of course, I'm with the "less is more" school as far as framing. I've seen too many works overframed. A frame should contain and compliment the image. It should never become part of the image. The old masters are often framed in an ornate moulding with no liners (linen, fillets, et al).
Certain artist's work look good in a multiple layered frame if they are strongly graphic oriented and colorists. Large abstracts look great with no frame -- perhaps just some nice fabric tape around the edges to hide the staples (or the artist stretches the canvas with the staples in the back of the stretchers -- better yet!) I have an older abstract of mine with a simple oak ogee shape moulding around it and it hangs in a stairwell. Works fine for me. I just framed an impressionistic print of a street in Rome with dominate pines in the foreground. I simply used a gold filet, dimensional "well" using a heavy bevel linen covered matt and a simple shape toned gold leaf moulding with black sides. Looked great and the customer was certainly satisfied.

osso-I like the name FRAMERMAN> hee hee. I wear a tasteful tutu and a tight marron belly shirt with gold leafing that sez "F." a large gold cape and a pair of Chuck Taylor high tops and VOILA. IM OFF TO DO GOOD IN THE ARENA OF EMBELLISHMENT OF ARTWORK.

Whew , Im glad there are others who like corner blocks on frames. I have a work going into a regional AWS show and Ive been getting crap from the juror about the block edges . At least I didnt just get kicked out without a peep. They are allowing me to reframe if I do it by next Fri. (harf a loaf)

wiz-I saw some works by Milet that were "overframed" the gold leafing and the gargoyles--OI , you hadda wear shades . The frames looked like some damn portals into a pharaohs tomb. Absolutely no context since the Milets were mostly pastoral scenes

I agree - less is more.


When i paint on canvas i don't frame. The staples are on the back, the corners are neatly folded and the sides painted to tone with the painting. They are about 2 inches deep and have enough presence without a frame - a frame sort of imprisons them. (with a little help from husband and father who make my stretchers, i make up my own canvasses in sizes and shapes I want)

When i paint on paper i like a mount of at least 3 inches top and sides and at least 3 1/2 at the bottom. I tend to frame in limed ash quite often as it just works well and is simple and contemporary.

I NEVER work to standard sizes but to the size and shape an image needs.

Sometimes a small image does work really well in a very big mount (or matt on your side of the pond).

A bad frame really drags a good work down and a good frame can 'lift' an average work.

Accent the positive. The key word is "accent," not over-whelm. c.i.

Wiz, yep, compliment is a good word for what a frame should do if you do frame.

I agree many paintings look best with the canvas sides stapled under; when I make my own canvasses (not lately because of time) I always staple under.

I also like stray drips on the sides, um, drips and drools. I have a bias that the side should not be stark white (unless it works) when those drips fall so fetchingly on the side.... I think using the dominant color for the side could work if the work is subtle but....could also not work. What am I getting at, I like to see real layers of work, but that is a little hard if you start out with a white canvas. And I am not very interested in carrying my painting around the corner at the time I am painting.

I guess I don't know what you mean, GW, painter's tape...you meant the white artist's tape? or is there some product in diff colors?

Vivien's two inch sides seem ideal to me, at least for bigger work. 'tis a luxury though for many to have good thick stretchers.

frame
This is all SO useful. My experience with framing is virtually nil, so I'll just read and absorb. One thing I'd like to ask: Does anyone use the "floater" type of frame where the picture appears to be suspended in a space within the frame. I really like the effect, for fairly larger works (e.g., at least 24 X 30). Also, I hate the wrap around (gallery wrap?) method where the painting continues around the stretcher bar. It looks too much like a Xmas package. I can't image a significant work presented that way. I generally just paint the side, a dominant color or, in one case, a virtual black mixed with a bit of the dominant color--I too would like to know about the tape mentioned. I've got a prospective framer (a not too successful artisan who works at odd jobs and is now, so he says, putting together a workshop) coming to my studio to discuss what he would recommend and what prices he could give me. If he's decent and economical I would be willing to give him my future work--providing him the advantage of consistency and volume. At the same time a neighbor, a master cabinet maker, is interested in learning framing. I have no idea what the future holds for my relation with either of them. I do want framing that is tasteful, complimentary, unostentatious and relatively cheap. Hope I'm not being unrealistic. I've bought some books on framing, but given my background it will be a while before I'm able to benefit from them.

JL-I sometimes use a floating paper oN a mat . For this I usually cut my paper with deckel scissors or fold and unfold the edges and then car

elessly tear the paper so it doesnt appear surgically cut. then, my wife (who is a fibre artist0 had suggested we sew the paper to the mat. This only works with certain kinds of paintings . For example, I did one of a small study of a black lunch box opened and an apple and a candy bar and rumpled sandwich wrapper on a shaded white surface. other light colors appear toward the top and I have some poetry from Stan rodgers along the side. The sewn paper is connected with sisal and its got a long end that hangs outside the mat line (breaks the b oundary-)

JL , some advice, dont you never let friends do your framing cuz you need someone who is better than you at framing. If theyre not any good, you fire them and find someone. You cant stay awake nights worrying about your frames if they just arent quite right. If a friend does this work, I guaren-damn-tee it you wont be friends for very long

My framer is a conservationist by training and has better skills than me to achieve what WIZ said. "Complement but dont overload." The best frames display the best in a work, they package it in a sensible and understated way. Since you do acrylics, you have to decide whether your going to display your works as works on paper or as oil style canvaspaintings. Each has its own rules for display and framing.

Yeah, what he said.

I reread my afore and i sound like a real doofus, however Im kind of passionate about this very subject and my writing style gradually gets more downhome. However, I care not what other may advise you, its hard to have a friend do craftsman work for you and still expect them to only work to your level of expected quality. It puts a strain on a relationship. Its better to go through a bunch of framers till you find one you really like and then develop a friendship with that person.