Framing And Mat Standards For Watercolors

If a large portion of your paper is white mat with a light color and a darker inner mat in a complementary color.

Framing and mat standards for watercolors.

Museum quality made with 100 rag should last 25 to 50 years. Any wider may look overpowering. If you ve added a four inch mat to a 16 x 20 inch watercolor your new dimensions are 24 x 28 inches. Note that in many watercolor competitions they require a white mat so it is better to double mat in white.

For these dimensions a one to two inch wide frame would look fine. An 8 x 10 standard frame may come with a 1 1 2 mat which allows you to frame a 5 x 7 image as well. When in doubt keep it simple. I almost always double mat my art.

Matting your watercolors protects and enhances the look of your paintings by cleanly defining the image edges and isolating your image in a uniform neutral or complementary background. If you mat with those background colors the artist s intended focal point will still draw the eye to it. Watercolors are a more delicate medium so lighter neutrals tend to work better. Your eye can usually tell if your painting is out of proportion to the frame.

Cheap joe s art stuff offers a variety of matboards mounting board pre cut mats mounts and mat frames for framing and presenting your artwork. The mat is the quiet that allows the artwork to sing a standard mat width is 2 1 2 to 3 although larger artwork will require something more substantial. Matting and framing your work. In general using the dominant colors of the art in the mat draws the eye to the art rather than to the framing.

This allows the mat to overlap the image slightly holding it behind the frame. Generally the mat will cover 1 4 on each side of the image. Be sure to vary the width of the mat and frame as similar widths can appear visually stagnant. Screwdrivers you will probably need both a flat and a phillips head type.

We recommend a mat at least twice as wide as the width of the frame. So a mat for a 5 x. Generally the top mat will be darker on a. Currently there are several types of matting material acid free buffered or what is called regular matboard should last about 7 years before the buffering gradually turns acid.

The mat opening will be slightly smaller than the suggested picture size. Think of the mat as a window drawing the eye in towards your work. Often the artist has some focal point that contrasts with the background colors. Bottom weighted mats bottom weighting means making the bottom mat width slightly wider than the top left and right sides to compensate for an optical illusion that happens where your bottom mat width looks narrower.