Framing

 “A picture frame sets off a work of art from its surroundings, bringing attention to the work and lifting it apart from its setting.”



I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t able to finish the main artwork I was working on this week. It did have some interesting framing that was going to be even more emphasized in the final product, but alas, the sketch was fighting me. 


The art that I did do this week was more geared towards color palette challenges, in which the artist has a specific, limited number of colors in order to make a piece, usually a simple drawing of a character (though I do want to do it with larger pieces at some point). While framing didn’t exist as purposefully in this setting, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t at play at all.




For one, these aren’t full-page pieces, they are contained within the page, and this fact does mean that they have a sort of margin around them, though not in the traditional sense. Because they are not rectangular images, they don’t have the traditional margin found around a picture or a block of text on a page, but the white of the canvas surrounding them does act as a sort of margin or frame, containing the image to what is provided (since none of these are full-body pieces) and leaving whatever other context might exist to the viewer’s imagination. 


The colorful circles behind the characters add another element of framing, adding interest to the piece and making the artwork pop (and also adding a bit of a lighting element, since I enjoy doing funky lighting). These circles serve as the only background element, framing the character, but not completely, considering the character is able to pop out of this frame, adding even more visual interest to the piece.

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