If the drawing was sketched with colored pencils, a fixative will also intensify the colors and prevent fading. Unprotected paper also tends to absorb moisture and dirt out of the atmosphere. This is a nice drawing, Lorraine! You can cut mats to any size. Framers can inflict a lot of damage.. If artwork is not very large, the shop does it. Below youll find several examples of art displays. So it depends where you are going to hang your artwork to minimize the reflections.Plexiglass is light and durable. Framing Colored Pencil Drawings: Must You Use Glass? Glass suspends the artwork in the middle and creates open space between the art and the frame. 
Darkening the wall with paint, by the way, adds a certain drama and may reduce some of the glare that takes place in galleries where the light bounces off white walls. Glad I came across your post.
This colored pencil drawing has a double mat. Just think of it as picking out various shades of gray that are in your drawing. Canvas float frames give an interesting effect to some contemporary pieces (see below). Larger pieces of paper (40 x 60) have more movement than smaller ones, and they are more apt to be pulled toward the Plexiglas, requiring a larger fillet (perhaps a 3/4 spacer as opposed to the standard 1/4) to keep the paper and glazing material separated. The materials used in conservation matting and framing are somewhat more expensive than ordinary frame-shop supplies, but what one actually pays for is the increased amount of time and labor involved, especially in cooking up an adhesive paste, brushing it on, and waiting for it to dry. These are the bars in the back to which the painting attaches. Art on paper must have a mat, plexiglass, backing and frame. This colored pencil landscape is drawn on Uart Sanded Pastel Papers, which comes in a variety of grits and makes for a very painterly drawing. The exuberant golden jacket of the king seen in the last image matches with more elaborate frame. The two groups sometimes part company when it comes to the business of finding the right mats, frames, and lighting for drawings. The drawing is likely to get lost in scale. The more customary approach is to group a number of drawings, enticing the viewer to move closer to get a better view. If you see a page you find hard to use or need assistance, please contact the artist at: nika@veronicasart.com. Stains also pose significant risk to unprotected paper. Framing of oil/acrylic paintings is much easier because there are fewer moving parts involved. Commentdocument.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a49f4d956af7fdc41a3da15fad688c4a" );document.getElementById("c7fd7f0478").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and site URL in my browser for next time I post a comment. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Mat board is perfect for colored pencils. However, even if all you do is put a single mat on the drawing or sketch, thats enough spacing. Whether sketched in black or colored pencil, drawings can be preserved by framing. } At times, the mat will be a color different from the paper, and the mat may contain designs and colors complementing the drawing. It also creates a little space between the paper and the glass so the image does not mark the glass. The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. That was with mostly ink drawings. The best way to eliminate the need for glass in framing is to use a rigid support to begin with.
The graphite and pen and inks I usually find work well with either black or charcoal bottom mat and medium to medium-light top mat, with a matte gray or matte black metal frame. However, if you do a lot of drawing and plan on selling your work, its a good investment to buy a professional mat cutter and learn how to cut mats yourself.Mat cutters give the greatest flexibility possible in mat cutting. { Here are just a few. It does not store any personal data. She teaches English composition at a community college.
In fact, it is rare to see a drawing, print, or watercolor on display without a mat and frame.
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Why it used to be necessary; why it may no longer be the only option. Conservators speak not only about framing and matting but also the entire frame package. That package typically consists of backing material (acid-free corrugated cardboard or polystyrene-cored board, often called Fome-Cor); a backboard that may be called conservation board (high-quality cardboard and paper made of chemically refined wood pulp) or rag board (made of cotton or linen stock); the drawing itself; a window mat (again, rag board, buffered rag board, or conservation board); covering glass (including regular glass or acrylic glazing materials, such as ultraviolet-shielded Plexiglas, Lucite, and Acrylite); and the encompassing frame (wood, metal, and plastic), which canbut need notbe made airtight when sealed on the back with polyester film (Mylar), metal foil, or other impermeable materials. A lot of times expensive artworks have mats with a much wider width that add richness to art. Many galleries require framing with plexiglass as opposed to glass to minimize possible damage during transportation for a show. Was looking for ideas to display my sketches Thanks for sharing. While the layers of gesso do not protect the mat board from impact damage, it will allow you to frame smaller works without glass if you protect the back with a rigid support or foam core. or acrylic plexi-glass (plexiglass comes in different formats). })(); List choice Here is my drawing of figure skater Michelle Kwan, based on a reference photo in Blades on Ice magazine. Mount the drawing. The tape holds it all together but it also yellows the surfaces if its not acid-free. Either seems seems to work, depending on the colors. Acidity, which causes paper to become stained and brittle, is the most common long-term problem with improper matting and framing materials. You can also order samples and corner samples. Youve got to pick the right frame and assemble it, if its not a ready-made frame. If you go to a museum, youll see plenty of examples there. If you want to do a double mat, have a color mat as your inner layer and the off-white mat as the outer layer. Drawings and other works on paper generally recede in the presence of paintings, whose colors are more likely to stand out. What brand is it? If these paintings had silver/grey elements, they would benefit from a silver frame. If the mat board has a core that has wood pulp, it wont remain acid-free, says Leslie Paisley, the head of paper conservation at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Massachusetts. Plexiglass tends to pop out of the frame in large drawings and large glass sheets are also too heavy for these frames. Usually panels are thin, unless they are cradled. For better or worse, exhibitions in galleries last only a few weeks, after which the drawings return to storage or someones private home, where the longer-term problem of preservation actually begins. The artist is committed to providing digital services on her website, that are available to everyone and in accordance with accessibility standards. Professional framing is expensive, and if you have to mount an entire solo show you know how draining that is financially, especially if you just begin showing your work and its not in a commercial gallery setting.
A mat that is perfectly acceptable to conservators may turn acidic from backing material that contains harmful wood pulp if it is in direct contact with a wood frame, absorbing acids from the wood. In this short video you can see how I assemble custom-cut real wood frame using the provided hardware. [FONT="Arial"]I always welcome critiques and criticisms of my work! This light grey mat mimics the colors seen in the glass. If you are not an artist, but you have just purchased an original drawing and want to frame it yourself, youll find lots of useful information here. If you decide to stick a picture into a ready-made frame without the mat, add corners that would maintain necessary space between the photo and glass. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". If I choose to leave an area of the white paper surrounding the drawing, then I could choose a white frame of which I did very rarely. Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images, How to Use Rubber Stamps to Stamp on Plastic or Acrylic, How to Transfer a Photo to an Oil Painting, How to Pick a Color for Matting a Pencil Drawing, Copyright 2022 Leaf Group Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Wood pulp contains lignin, a natural glue that holds wood fibers together but turns brown and more acidic as it ages. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Its like steaming a stamp off an envelope, and that water can damage the paper, says Ellis. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. A less visible but no less problematic area is adhering the artwork to the backboard, using what is referred to as hinges. The neat thing is that I only mentioned the ones Im familiar with. Real wood frames come in a variety of styles. Still, sometimes a drawing and painting share a wall, and Newman says that in this case, the gallery might paint the wall blue to neutralize the effect. Mats are not always used in the framing of drawings. Care of Prints and Drawings, The, by Margaret Holben Ellis (Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, California). Many of the materials that framers use are described as acid-free, but that may not offer sufficient protection to artwork.