Whether they are photos or paintings, frames serve as the stage and proscenium in which the audience views a work of visual art. Picture frame mouldings are what make the difference.

Wood Or Metal?

When it comes to selecting the right picture frame moulding, your initial choice will be made between wood and metal. This choice is largely determined by the nature of the image being displayed; paintings generally use a wood picture frame moulding, whereas a photograph is displayed with a metal one.

The metal picture frame moulding used for the latter is usually black and narrow. Such picture frame moulding supplies include contrasting white mat board so as to draw the viewer’s attention to the center where the photograph appears. Another reason to choose this type of picture frame moulding is in the case of a gallery display where some degree of uniformity is desired so as not to detract from the artistic images themselves.

Wood picture frame moulding tends to be much more variable in appearance. At certain times and places in history, some types of wood picture frame moulding could be extremely elaborate, with inlays, carvings and filigrees. Today however, such picture framing moulding would definitely detract from the painting itself, and has been out of favor for decades. Today’s sleek, simple wood picture frame moulding supplies are designed to complement the paintings while effectively blending into home décor. When it comes to wood picture framing moulding, you also have a variety of widths and colors from which to choose.

Custom or Standard?

When your art photography or paintings are of standard size and ratio, it is possible to get inexpensive, mass-produced picture frame moulding. For “one-off” sizes however, you will need to get custom picture frame moulding supplies. These mouldings are more expensive, but on the up side, give you more control over many elements of the finished project that you would not have with a standard, prefabricated frame. Some of these variables include width and color in addition to size.

In Summary

Picture frame mouldings may be metal or wood, and standard or custom. If you purchase a framing kit, you will get not only the moulding itself, but all the materials required in order to successfully frame your work of art. There is a wide selection when it comes to picture frame moulding as well as a diversity of colors, styles and prices; there are few hard-and-fast rules, so go with what your own sense of aesthetics tells you.

Susan Slobac writes about–picture frame mouldings

The art industry has always been, and probably always will be, very in demand.  Not only because everyone enjoys and good work of art, but because businesses depend on creative marketing images to capture buyer attention.  Advertising is arguably the biggest business in the US, if not the world, so the need for cutting edge and clever artistic images is always expanding.

The average starting salary for graphic artists alone starts around $15/hr and can skyrocket from there.  About 63% of traditional and digital artists are self employed and many of them earn even more than salaried artists.  Just knowing these figures is enough to make some want to run out and enroll in the closest art school.  However, there is a sort of catch-22 situation here.  The better art schools out there (as in the ones you want to enroll in if you plan on making decent money), require you to already have a bit of skill in visual art.

So what do you do if you weren’t a child prodigy who knew they wanted to go into this industry from the age of 5?  Well there is still time and hope to learn art at home! The first thing I did was jump online and search for free art lessons. These lessons range from basic shape drawing and lighting, to figure and detail drawing, painting, and much more.  Any medium you decide you want to work with has some free lessons out there.

Most people, including myself, start off not really knowing what their own style is.  So you start off by drawing everything from forest and urban scenes to apples on the counter.  I tried cartoon, comic, classical, realistic, and even art nuevo styles before I settled on my chosen genre of fantasy art.

To help get you started, here is a short list of my favorite free drawing lessons:

Idrawgirls.com

Art Factory

Drawing tutorials

I could make this article last for days by giving you tips and pointers for getting started but here are the two simplest, yet most important:

1.  Start with the basics.</b>  No matter how trivial or boring they may be, they are essential for creating a solid foundation that you can later manipulate over and over.

2.  Don’t be afraid to try!</b>  Try anything, learn whatever you can.  Any style that interests you should be looked into.  If you later decide it’s not for you, that’s totally fine.  But you will never grow if you don’t try.

Many times, people learn enough from their at-home studies to begin their career as an artist.  This is not the path I chose, but can be done.  The benefits are a cheaper price and the luxury of learning on your own time.  Of course the drawbacks are no degree to present and spending a bit more time building up your reputation.

K.Sokolov graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art and has worked for trading card and gaming companies and is now a freelance artist designing everything from book covers to personal collection items. If you’d like free access to a wonderful online resource for learning art, click here.

The early adoption and subsequent interest in photorealistic rendering by the graphics community is most likely due to the “mission statement” of photorealistic rendering: “Create an image that is indistinguishable from a photograph.” This mission statement gives photorealistic rendering a visual “Turing test”, and an easily defined metric for a successful image. Artistic computer graphics does not have a single mission statement. Instead, researchers are pursuing a number of image creation goals. The goals of Artistic computer graphics include simulating traditional artistic media, understanding the human visual system, communicating effectively with low bandwidth, abstracting images, enhancing learning, and improving user interaction.

The control of detail in an image for purposes of communication is becoming the hallmark of artistic computer graphics. Often this control of image detail is combined with stylization to evoke the perception of complexity in an image without an explicit representation. Artistic images also provide a more natural vehicle for conveying information at different levels of abstraction and detail. Seven occasions when an artistic computer generated image has an advantage are listed below.

1. Image Reproducibility: In a technical journal printed in black and white, fully shaded three-dimensional geometry may not print well. For example, photographic images do not copy or fax as well as line art images.

2. Medical Visualization: Researchers are focusing on providing artistic algorithms, which can be manipulated interactively, for real time visualizations of volume data. A good example is the visualization of electric fields inside the human body.

3. Communication of Abstract Ideas: The human visual system expects realistically rendered characters to behave realistically. Therefore, nonphotorealistic animation can be used to express ideas beyond the physical and logical norm, in a way that is acceptable to a general audience. An example of this is force diagrams used in physics textbooks.

4. Evoking the Imagination: Simple line drawings can communicate abstract ideas in ways that a photograph cannot. In a photorealistic image, everything in the scene is rendered in fine detail, leaving little to the imagination. In comparison, by not depicting every detail, a nonphotorealistic image allows the viewer to share in the interpretive process.

5. Animation: When creating an animation it is necessary to focus the attention of the audience on the relevant actions and elements in the scene. A viewer inspecting the fine details of a photorealistic scene can miss the big picture. Most nonphotorealistic techniques employ an economy of line, limiting the detail in a scene, which makes directing the attention of the viewers easier for an animator.

6. Compression: By not depicting all the detail required for photorealistic images, nonphotorealistically rendered computer graphics images typically take less time to create, can be rendered to the screen faster, and use less storage space. For example, half-tone images yield the same shape from shading cues as traditionally rendered computer graphics images when viewed from a distance. However, the half-tone images require between one tenth and one one-hundredth of the storage space.

7. Communication of Design or Process Completeness: Photorealistic rendering implies an exactness and perfection that may overstate the fidelity of the simulated scene to a photograph. Artistic computer graphics can aid a viewer in understanding that the image they see is only an approximate depiction of a scene. An excellent example of this phenomena is architectural rendering. Architects have found that on-site building conditions and variations in regional building codes can lead to last minute changes in building plans. If clients are shown realistic images of the proposed building these last minute changes can come as a shock, leading to angry, disappointed clients. However, if the clients are shown nonphotorealistic images of the proposed building clients tend to accept the design process as incomplete and the plans as changeable. Therefore, the clients usually accept on-site changes.