Framing Demo: Canvas, Panel, or Board - After You Paint (18 of 27)

When framing a painting on board, panel, or stretched canvas in a frame without glazing, you will need the following tools. You'll need rubber bumpers to protect the wall and promote airflow. You'll need a pencil or pen. I have a pallet knife handy in case I need it for leverage. And you'll need a pair of scissors. You'll also need wire cutters, hanging wire, a box cutter. I would just have it handy. A screwdriver, usually Phillips head, and offset clips as well as screws. Now, I've already sized mine for the piece I'm going to demonstrate, and I have four ready to go. You'll also need D-rings and a ruler. Now, here is a large decorative wood frame that I have on hand. It has a linen liner and would work for any painting on a hard surface, including a properly varnished water media painting. It's pretty substantial, so the painting image would have to be just right. The liner is already attached and lines up nicely with the painting. It's linen, so it should be safe long term. You can see that it softens the transition between the painting and the frame. When I flip it over, you can see the retailer attached it to the wood frame with what are called framing points. All I have to do is place the painting into the liner and secure the set. But we're not going to use this one for our demo. I'm going to use this smaller wood frame that does not have a liner. It does have this inner strip of German silver color that's part of the frame and that acts a little bit like a liner to soften the edge. The panel then slips right into the window here. Notice how shallow the rabbit is. It'll work well for this thin canvas panel. You can see that I still need to add a protective product along the rabbit. That's where we'll start. I line up the rabbit foam along the rabbit, mark the length with my hand, and then cut it. I'm concerned that it may show a little bit along the edge, so I'm going to cut off a tiny bit of the edge like this. Now, I can strip off the protective cover and apply the foam tape. So, this seems to be fine. I'll do the same for the other three sides. Now I'll place the canvas panel in the window with the image facing out. And you should have some room around the edges for expansion. When temperatures change, the painting may very slightly expand or contract. So you should really just center the panel in the window. I had already determined what size offset clips I needed. So now I can sit them in place. It's a fairly small piece, so we only need one per side. Normally, they're placed about 5 or 6 in apart. You want even coverage. Now, offset clips are meant to hold the canvas panel or board in place without any damage to the painting surface. So, the screw will only be secured to the part that sits on the frame. I made sure the screw isn't too long as well. I definitely don't want it to pop out the front. I center the clip, push it against the edge, and then screw it into place. Be careful to tighten it without overtightening. You don't want to crack the wood, but you also don't want the clip to move. You have to find that happy medium. And we'll repeat this for each side. You can see now we have all four clips attached with no damage to the panel, and it's stable in the frame. I don't normally put a dust cover over the back of my oils, but it is considered best practice, even the use of a backing board. It's your decision, and it partly depends on where the painting will be hung. Since I'm not adding a backing, we'll go right to adding hanging hardware. I'll start by adding the rubber bumpers. So, I'll check to make sure I know what edge is the bottom of the painting. Always check this before you add hardware. So, this is the bottom, and I'll apply two bumpers, one in each corner. Now, I'll use a ruler to determine where I want to place the D-rings. As mentioned, they usually sit about a/4 or a third of the way down from the top. Now, this frame is about 14 1/2 in long on this edge. So, I'm going to place the rings at about 4 1/2 to 5 in down. I'll use a pencil and place a dot at about the 5 in. And I'll put it in the middle of this frame edge. This is a tiny edge, but I think it'll be okay. I mark the dot on the other side as well. As I mentioned, this is a small frame and a small edge, so I'm using a smaller D-ring. It's not a heavy painting at all, so it'll be fine. I place each D-ring on the dot where the screw will go and secure the screw. Notice that the ring itself hangs off the edge. And this is fine to do. Once in place, I stretch the wire through one of the loops with about 6 to 7 in of extra length. Then I stretch the wire past the other ring with another 6 to 7 in beyond that. Now mark the spot with your hand where you need to cut it and then cut the wire. Now slip the wire through both D-rings. And once you have the wire evenly distributed, secure the one side by slipping the wire through the ring a second time. And then use the excess wire to loop around and around the main wire a few times. This will keep it from slipping while we work on the other side. On the other side, pull the wire taut and then do the same thing. Slip the wire through the D-ring a second time and loop it around and around the main wire. This time, keep looping until you run out of wire. Then go back to the first side and finish off that looping. So now we have the hardware in place. The next thing is to add documentation. I like to add a transparent sticker with my contact information. And then I write the painting title on the back of the panel. So at this point, the painting is secured with space around the edge and protection from the wood. The offset clips are tight and the hanging wire is about a third of the way down. It's fairly taut. And we have the identification sticker and the painting title. You could put a protective cover on as I mentioned, but in my case, this is the finished product. In the next lecture, I'll frame a work on paper.