Painted Frames

There's space in the Plastic Bag for everything - it's a big bag after all - including a record of picture frames I've painted. The frames are bought but then painted and varnished by me. Most have been given away but I want to keep a record of the various frames in one place, rather than random photos on different bits of social media, so here it is.

I painted the first frame because I wanted to frame a small watercolour painting I'd done on a course last summer. I wanted a black mount and then a multicoloured frame to match the painting and, of course, that's something I couldn't get so I thought I'd paint my own. Getting my acrylics out I started splodging on the colours, all the colours I had in a random fashion. Acrylics dry darker than when they are wet but adding gloss varnish made them shine.

I enjoyed painting the frame and wanted to do more. I got a couple of small wooden frames and thought I'd try out the splodgy approach again but in a more controlled way, using variations of one colour and those either side of it on the colour wheel. So I did a red one and a blue one.

Then I wanted to do something different and, to coincide with a little old lady's birthday, decided to do a floral frame as a present. I mulled over doing a range of different flowers around the frame, with cutting out a flower template to make them identical, with making it look like a posy of flowers. Then I decided I was over-complicating it and it was best to keep it simple so I painted very simple flower shapes, painted the background green and then started adding more detail to the flowers.

I have a lovely, colourful bowl I bought in Barcelona a few years ago which is decorated with sun images so I thought I'd use that as the basis for another frame.

I decided that Christmas presents would be handmade this year so I got some lovely ridged frames and painted them in the mixed colour approach I'd used in the summer. I did two frames and painted them in different shades of blue shading to purple on one side of the colour wheel and green on the other side.

More recently I've used that same approach to paint another ridged frame, a bigger frame, but this time basing it on purple, shading to blue on one side and red on the other.

Much as I enjoy the mixy approach, and I like the effects you can get by mixing colours and using the brush to leave a sort of feathered effect in places, I can't keep doing the same thing. So I played around with different designs and colours and drew out a load of different ones in my sketchbook and settled on one I'd done with stripes of colour on a plain background. That made me think of paintings by Piet Mondrian so I think of this as my Mondrian frame.

For this frame, I also experimented with the acrylic paint by adding a gloss medium to the paint rather than water so see what effect that would have in bringing out the colours. It certainly makes the colours bolder and more vibrant. Adding the varnish really makes it zing.

I'm not sure what to do for my next frame but I think I'll have a break before starting another one. Watch this space...