Framing alternatives

I often paint things not considering such practicalities as framing. I have gotten better about taping off a border around my watercolors to provide an edge, but I am particularly bad about thinking these things through when it comes to acrylics. And since my favored surface is a thin birch board, I frequently end up with a "wall-to-wall" picture that might be diminished were some of it to be covered in an edging of frame.

I recently learned that if you paint on a "cradle board" you can eliminate the need for framing and also provide an extra interesting element to your painting. It's sort of the opposite of a shadow box—instead of being concave, where you look into it, it's convex with the flat surface standing away from the wall about 1.75 inches. I used one of these when I painted one of my Roseville-inspired floral still life pictures—I used a stencil to create a textured background, which was then mostly obscured by the subject itself and by a thin translucent layer of paint to knock back the effect and allow the subject to shine. But I then continued the stencil pattern around the four edges, and didn't knock that back, so that it blends with and yet stands out from the painting. I really like the effect.

Unfortunately, I didn't think ahead on my latest two paintings of the female and male celebrators of Dia de los Muertos. I painted them both on thin board, and then afterwards realized that there was, for instance, such a narrow margin of T-shirt neckline below the rebozo on "Marigolds" that it would disappear if framed. Further, I didn't care for the effects of framing on these particular paintings—I liked their starkness on that flat green background. So I decided that a workable solution would be to decorate the edges of a cradle board configuration and then simply glue these pictures to the front of that, thereby giving them a decorative edge and making them stand out from the wall.

Here is the result of the first one; I painted the edges and a small margin of the front of the board in the same paler pink I had used for the background of her rebozo, and then stenciled in the colors of that garment to give her a really bright "halo" of color that will only be seen from an angle, not straight on. I bought some Gorilla-brand wood glue and some small clamps and stuck her down to her "frame."

 

I'm now waiting for my order of a second cradle board (I only had one in the house) to arrive so I can do the same to "Skull Boy" (with different stencils and colors to complement his picture themes). But this experience will definitely teach me to think ahead; those cradle boards are expensive and therefore better used as intended, rather than simply as background mounts!