Working on a New Watercolor Painting, and Thoughts on Matting and Framing Watercolors

I've been pretty true to my "15 minutes a day" painting goal this week. It helps that it's still -30C outside (that's -20F for you Americans). I keep reminding myself "Be brave, be brave," as I lay down blocks of solid color. I started on the half-ripe berry today, I just needed to break away from green for a little while. After a second trip to the glass place to get the corners "dimed" (I had no idea that not all frames came with 90 degree corners!) so that they would fit, I have all the materials I need to finish framing my "Secrets of the Muskeg" series. Or I thought I did - somehow, I came back with one less piece of glass...so I'll have to stop by the glass place again tomorrow. It's been really slow getting this series framed, but they look wonderful when assembled with mat and frame. The photo gray and black mats are simple, but wide, and the weathered wood suits the theme so perfectly. The guy who I hired to make the frames really did an excellent job. And I had just enough matboard in just the right colors to do all three. About matting...when I started ordering mats in colors to suit the pictures I wanted to frame, I had no idea how I was going to use up all that matboard. A sheet of 32" x 40" is huge, and so I knew I'd have a lot of excess. But I've actually been able to be really efficient with the leftovers. Since I tend to gravitate toward similar colors and painting subjects, I can always find a piece of matboard from my stock that not only fits a finished painting but suits it really well. But with these final three paintings, I've exhausted my stock and will have to place a new order soon. I don't mind - it's fun to sort through my sample mat corners and pick colors that make a painting glow. I will wait until my frame order comes before I order mats though. I tried out this online frame store and I'm hoping that the frames will look as great as they did on the web site, and that the shipping cost won't be too frightening for my address in Canada. I do get so tired of trying to order from a web site, and then finding that either they won't ship to a non-US address at all, or they demand a small fortune in shipping.