Focus on Watercolors - Custom & Standard Sized Mats and Frames
Watercolor artists are a busy bunch – they paint in the studio, they paint in the great outdoors, and now because of professional quality personal printers they also reproduce their images as digital prints. This gives them two very different options. They can sell the original artwork and they can also offer less expensive prints of their work. If you are a watercolor artist think about how Documounts can be your business partner. We can help you enhance both your paintings and reproductions with the right mats and frames. White and black are always a good choice, but we think watercolors especially benefit from color mats. The right color mat, even it is just peeking out as a slightly revealed bottom mat, can really set off the colors of the painting and add something special to the overall look. Finding the right color is easier with a Matboard Specifier. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Best Savings The best way to save on matting and framing for your watercolor work is to standardize the size of the artwork and to order as many of the exact same standard sized mats and frames as possible. * If you are making prints, this is easy enough to do. Even if the size you end up with is not standard, you’ll get a great price on custom mats in quantity. Here is a pricing guide so that you to get an overall idea of where our price breaks fall. The dimension listed is the outside dimension of your mat, or the frame size. If you are framing original artwork, then you can still benefit from the quantity price breaks we offer. Check out the pricing guide so that you can order the best price break for what you want. If the outside dimension is not listed there, just round up to the next size shown. *A word about keeping sizes standard: If you are selling your prints or original work unframed and you keep the outside dimension a standard size, your customer can easily find a frame. If you are wondering what those standard outside dimensions are, you can see a chart here. Below is a list of some of the most common watercolor paper sizes and our suggestions for the outside dimensions. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Framing your Watercolors We’re lucky to be able to talk with artists from across the US and from them we learn a lot about what our customers want. For example we have a group of watercolorists in California that only order metal frames in German Silver because it’s a neutral color that goes well with warm and/or cool tones. Another customer in Texas orders metal frames in the color Graphite because he thinks this softer-than-black color more gently picks up and anchors the darks in his paintings. A long-time customer in Maine says that she orders neutral wood frames in a simple, square shape because that’s often what watercolor societies require for their exhibitions. Take a look at these examples and see if you agree. And feel free to offer your own suggestions! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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