Picture Framing Workshop with David Sawyer

No matter how great your painting is there are few occasions where it is not improved by a beautiful frame. High street framers will usually glue something together for you from off the shelf mouldings, good enough perhaps, but rarely outstanding. You may have seen that successful artists like David Sawyer often use gessoed frames, which are painted up to suit the specific image.

What will you be learning?

As artists we have skills in abundance and time can be made available if we choose, so making our own frames is a no brainer.

David Sawyer, along with being one of Britain’s leading landscape painters, often frames his own work. As you would expect his frames are sensitive and beautiful. He is running a framing workshop which will get you going with the basics of producing hand made picture frames.

• Typical types of mouldings, what types of wood and profiles are available
• The use of slips, liners and fillets
• How to decide on your moulding
• Measuring the artwork
• Setting up and calibration of the Morso (guillotine)
• Cutting the moulding
• Getting to know the types of glues available
• Setting up the underpinner and joining
• Clamping and reinforcing the frame
  

We will provide one small frame to be gessoed and gilded, and each participant will also create a new frame of a bespoke size. Working with professional framing equipment, you’ll choose, measure, and cut your mouldings, then join and glue your frame to your own specifications. If you have any works on paper you’d like to frame instead, please drop us an email so we can bring the necessary equipment. Expect to pay a little more for materials, £15-£27 for an average frame. You don’t need to bring anything to this workshop other than a picture you’d like to frame and a notebook.

We plan to eat together, we’ll optionally provide an indulgent but healthy lunch with vegetarian options for our usual modest charge. Students who have been inducted, or who already know how to use the machines safely, will be able to use the equipment in the afternoon.Please get in touch to receive a discount for purchasing a half-day pass.