This morning's mini-challenge is to put frames around your sketches.
Setting your artwork apart from the borders of the page makes it look finished and important, and adds a graphic design element, which creates interesting art journal pages.
Before you begin your artwork, think about a layout for the frames on your page. You can use any shape,(even a heart for Valentine's Day!) but rectangles are pleasing to the eye and are easy to draw. Do not use a ruler! You want imperfect frames, so that they fit in better with the look of your sketches. You can hold your pen or pencil as you usually do, but use the pinky and ring finger to slide along the edge of your sketchbook or journal as a guide to draw the straight sides of the rectangles. This gives you a fairly straight edge, but retains the look of being hand-drawn.
You can use more than one frame on a page, if you wish, and add text or simply put a frame around the place where you will add a sketch.
The example above was done a few years ago in a watercolor journaling workshop I attended. We drew the frames in, did a light pencil sketch inside the frame, and then used an archival pen (like the Micron Pigma .05) to ink the outlines, and then added watercolor washes to color it in.
The brand of the aketchbook is called Komtrack. It is a unique type of book that has a spiral that can be removed, and many types of papers can be put back in. I have one that is half watercolor paper, and half paper that is good for drawing on.
Whatever your paper or sketchbook, using frames is a really good idea to try!
2 comments:
Hello Sister,
I like your blog! I was reading about framing the picture, but I thought we did it after we did the art. Do I have it wrong all this time or does it not really matter?
Thanks for visiting Sandy!
I don't really remember how we did it in that original workshop- you might be right- but I enjoy penciling in a frame first on the page and then working within it. I can always let parts of the picture emerge from the frame.
If I plan the frames first, my page usually looks stronger. I do wait until my drawing or painting is complete before I ink in the frame, so if I have parts that I want to overlap and go beyond the frame, it will "work."
I'm glad you commented!
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