How To Be A Carved Frame Of Leisure

It's all well and good to try to be a gentleman of leisure.  It's even fine to try to become one in 3 easy steps.  But what really sets you apart from other leisurely gentleman, is having a carved frame...

It goes something like this.....

I drill and dowel the boards to create the frame.

After I assemble the frame sections, it is time to comb the sketchbooks, consolidate some of those drawings, and create some new imagery.

I also have some sketches of the older dollar bill artwork.  1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, -I drew them all several years ago.  Here I am consulting my notes on the layout of the old 50 dollar bill.  I'm going to incorporate aspects of it in my frame composition.

Now it's time to start putting the imagery onto the frame.

I use a sharpie to 'finalize' the drawings on the board.  Bearing in mind that the Dremel Tool actually does the 'finalizing'.

Speaking of Dremel Tools, I just fried mine (He's dead, Jim.....).  So I'm going to clean up some sawdust and go to the store and buy another one.  Be right Back.

Back at it with my new Dremel Tool.

After I carve all of the sections, I layout the frame next to the piece and make sure everything is carved (I still have yet to catch 100% of my lines/notes.  i.e. every frame I have carved so far has at least one mistake in it), and start to develop my game plan for painting the frame.

In general, I want the frame to repeat some of the colors found in the piece itself, but also add a few extra colors.  I need the frame to add to the gestalt totality of the piece, not to detract or undermine it.

So now it's time to paint the frame.

.....and paint.....

....and paint......

.... and paint....

A few close ups of the finished piece.

Next time we'll take a look at some show images from In/ConFLUENCE.