Picture Framing Workshop with David Sawyer

Sunday 17th November
10.00am to 4.00pm

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.

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.

Note: There will be a more advance Framing workshop for those who want to learn about the gilding arts and how to use gesso.

What will you be learning?

• 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

Working with professional framing equipment you’ll choose, measure up and cut your mouldings, and join and glue your frames to your own specification. If you have any works on paper you’d like to frame instead drop us an email so we can bring the necessary equipment for it.

Expect to pay a little more for materials – £10-£15 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.

What’s even better? Completing this workshop will give you access to our Framing Studio Open Access. These designated sessions, usually held over the weekend, allow our artists to come, use the studio space and create their own frames with our equipment, including the guillotine and underpinner. Each session lasts for a full three hours, and the cost is £45.

About David

David Sawyer has been working as a fine artist since he left Canterbury College of Art in the eighties. During that time he’s won many awards and gained plenty of attention. His work often includes architectural motifs which he renders seemingly effortlessly in his impressionistic style. More recently he has been teaching, and students appreciate his uncomplicated and direct method and the generous way in which he shares his knowledge. As a seasoned professional he knows every angle of painting and most importantly he knows where to expend his time and energy in order to get his image.

If you’re interested in learning to paint landscape. Have a look at David’s Principles in Landscape course here