In this video we will show you how to mount and frame a drawing at home for about £10, Like this one. We will go from a basic A4 illustration drawing and put it into an A3 frame. It really makes it have a presence and be ready to hang on a wall. This can generally be done for about £10 and you get great results. In this example we’ll be using some Iron Man marker sketches I’ve created.
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We use a couple of Iron Man marker illustration drawings I did as samples. If you’d like to commission a drawing or painting, please email matt@mattelder.com for further details.
Iron Man Livestream Sketch Creation
Time codes to the Video:
0:00 Introduction
0:36 Overview – Here is one I prepared earlier
1:04 Picture Frame and Mounting Board Considerations
2:00 Tips for Starting
2:42 Taking off the Back of the Picture Frame
3:52 Mounting Artwork & Fixing Down
7:14 Placing Mount & Artwork into Frame – Get the Orientation right
8:32 The Big Reveal
Transcipt from the Show
G’day Everyone, Matt Elder of Family Bricks here and in this video we will show you how to mount and frame a drawing at home for about £10, Like this one. We will go from a basic A4 illustration drawing and put it into an A3 frame, like this one, with mount to really make it have a presence and be ready to hang on a wall.
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What Are We Doing?
So here is one I prepared earlier and put into a frame with a generic black mount and we are going to take this one and do something similar to it. In the description around the video I will have affiliate links so you can get most of this stuff pretty readily and not for much money.
I also readily use these sorts of frames for my oil paintings as well. So it is something that I use pretty regularly.
Checking Out the Frame and Mount
So we normally get this A3 frame which comes in plastic wrap and then also too, this is a black mount. Which generally recommend using when want to focus the eye in on things and because the subject matter that we have here is quite masculine in terms of Iron Man, it works out well.
But if you had something like flowers or something a bit lighter, you might just want a white mount, cause then it will make it feel like it is breathing a bit more. So if you got to the point where you can see with this one its black with a little bit of white inset there. If you did get the black by mistake and think “ah well, I want to use a white”, you could kind of use the back and have it in showing through but you will see these little corners and things. No ideal but if you are looking to do something, quick, cheap and get it framed, that’s away of doing it.
Preparing the Surface
So the first thing you do is just go through and whatever table surface you are using, ensure that it is clean, cause if it has any dust or dirt, its really going to pick up here. Flip it over, so when you are opening it if you do happen to scour it or anything, it will be on the back. So not the front Perspex or whatever it is.
These just first of all check to see if it is too badly beat up or anything like that. You might have to send it back. Seems ok. We’ll flip it over and you are going to have a whole bunch of these metal things holding the cardboard / MDF in there. So you usually just take a standard butter knife and just get in under there and life them up and be careful when you are doing that. Just go around and do them all.
Now the thing is when you take it out from here, you want the surfaces to remain clean. So certainly when you get it out of here, you are going to be placing it this side down. Cause if you place the other side down, potentially you are introducing a whole bunch of dirt into it.
Even sometimes these have a little bit of dirt on it so just give it a quick bit of a wipe down. You can even feel just a little bit of grit and stuff coming off.
Cleaning up the Glass / Perspex
And the same sort of thing. Usually and you probably can’t see it but there is a bit of dirt and dust in there so just take a lightly damp rag and just go over it as we want to pick all that stuff up. There is nothing worse than going to all this trouble and once it is mounted, seeing dirt under the glass and the only way to get it is to come back in and get it all out again.
Mounting the Artwork
So while that is letting itself dry, we will take our actual image , or document or whatever it is you want to frame and we’ll stick it on the mount. So again just check the mount itself , its all pretty clean, and nothing is too beat up.
So place it down and then we will place whatever the document is, in this case it is this artwork. So what you are going to find is, there is going to be 1,2,3mm overlap between the artwork and that. So you just want to try and center it , little tiny nudges. Unless it gets stuck in their like that , in which case just lift it up and do it again. Theres not much tolerance in it, so it might be a little on the fiddly side. So that is why you get it mostly where you want it and you are just slowly taping it around.
That’s whats nice when you are using a dark countertop, when you are looking through at it, where the paper and the overlap is there , you aren’t really guessing as you have the black surface underneath it.
So pretty close to that there. Then just to fix it down, you can use, you want a low tack tape. Basically what that means is once you put the tape down, after a few years if you want to take it out and redo it, or do something else, maybe put it in a nicer frame or what have you, then if you are using sticky tape or scotch tape or whatever, when you go to lift it up, it is going to peel and rip the paper.
Artist Low Tack Tape
Whereas this is like an artist low tack tape, so it will enable it to come of much easier or you can also use this painters tape that they use for cutting in edges and things. So that put it up on the wall, they paint over it and when they take it off, it leaves a nice crisp line. So whatever you have around.
I’m going to use the artist tape, then just little corners. Now I’m going to try to keep it on the diagonal like that and do all 4 the same. You will notice it when you flip it over if you really look for it, you’ll see the difference there in the corner. Alternatively you could just run tape the whole length all the way around.
But again just looking at something that in the future if you want to go through and reuse the drawing or the mount it is easy enough to come off. You are just looking for something to more or less just hold it there in place.
So we’ve got that and well just lift that up and that is it there. So you just want any little bits of flecks to get off, particularly on the black it is really going to show up.
Placing the Mount in the Frame
And then get our frame from earlier on, you can just see there is a few little bits of fluff and stuff in there which I’m not happy about and want to get out. Not really a deal break but just how OCD you might be with things. We’ll just leave that there for a minute or so to dry.
And that has been left to dry so now we’l just come along with our picture, we will just need to remember which way is up. It won’t be too hard or much of an issue here because we can see through, but when we go to hang it, we just need to make sure we know which way it is.
Keeping Track of the Orientation
So pop that in there, just come back to our backing mount, and again the reason we want to know which way is up so we know which way to put these, cause this is where it is going to hang off. So for this one because it is going to be there, we put this one here so when you hang it can go like that.
So then if you had it more in the orientation where you might have a portrait or something , you’d do it like that so that was at the top so the head is in there. So with these little metal pins that are here, you might have to gently massage it past the point.
Or in the case of this one over here, it has come a little too far unstuck, too far down so just bend that back a little bit. Make sure that is all in there and it is all good. Now it is just a quick matter of going through and flattening these down.
Flatten Down Metal Tabs
Ok so we’ve gone through and flattened all these down so now the big reveal when we flip it over and there we have it. And now that is on there you can just see a few little areas that have a bit of dust and flex , from this side so we’ll go through and give that a quick little wipe down.
Other Illustrations from a Livestream
These were some illustrations I did on a livestream, so if you click around the video you’ll be able to see how it was created. And here was the other one so I’ve got a couple there and my son is really into Iron Man at the moment, so I’ve done a couple of these and he just wanted them so figured I’d do some quick frames like this , won’t break the bank but will give a lot of punch and effect.
Then he also did this Iron Man LEGO mosaic for his birthday so there will be a link around the video where you can see his review on that as well.
If you’d like to commission a sketch or painting, please get in contact with me at matt@mattelder.com
Summing Up
If you found this video useful, give that thumbs up button a press, always love getting those. If you want to be super awesome, then consider subscribing to the channel.
If you’d like to see a quick overview and time lapse of how I created one of these pet portraits, click here.
To see the livestream video where these Iron Man pieces were created, click here.
Alternatively, here are some other videos you might enjoy.
Thanks for watching and that’s it from us here a Family Bricks. Until next time when we talk about all things lifestyle.
