Monday, July 12, 2010

I've Been Framed

Some of you may remember my dragon as a work in progress piece.. This was the artwork I submitted to the Worcester Art Museum faculty art show. What a difference a professional mat and frame makes.

I took my dragon to Gaston Art and Frame. I knew I wanted a mat with a round hole and the color of the mat to match as close as possible to the paper. Other than that there were so many choices. What color for a second mat? What kind of frame: wood, metal, ornate, plain?

John made it very easy. He pulled out  mat samples and frame samples. He brought out color choices that matched the dragon. A frame that had the feel of the dragon's talons. The really cool thing was he scanned in the artwork, mats, frames and then on his computer showed me what the choices would look like! I didn't have to try to imagine what the piece would look like framed. I could actually see it. We played around with different combinations of mat color and frames. Plain frames, ornate dragon talon frames, metal, black.

He had a wonderful knack of guiding me through the whole process so that the choices enhanced the piece and made my work look really good. Oh, and prices were very reasonable even without a coupon.

9 comments:

  1. Pictures!!! We need pictures! As I was reading your post, I was waiting to see what you came up with! :-) You'll have to post a picture when you have the chance!

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  2. Palm to forehead! Picture! That's what was missing.

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  3. Ahhh, very, very lovely! Thanks for posting! :-)

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  4. That's awesome, CJ!

    And I have never heard of the scanning in and looking at options you described. Sounds like fun.

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  5. Linda, it made things so much easier to be able to see how the different colors and frames would look.

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  6. Love it! And the Young One was right about the fish image...that's what it makes me think of too.

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  7. CJ--It looks great! So glad that John Gaston is working out for you. I love square (as opposed to rectangular) frames. Did you tell him about this blog post?

    Joan

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  8. This turned out so well! It's been really interesting to watch you take this project stage by stage.

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