Art, Photo and Picture Matting

Mats for Art, Photo and Picture Framing.

A photo mat can make a tremendous difference in the appearance of a picture and what area of a picture is predominent.

The most popular types of art and Picture Mats are single, double and triple. A single mat is a very good container for art work and the different colors can make great differences in the appearance of the art work.

The double photo mat has always been my favorite, because with different colors you can make people take a real tour around a piece of art.

You can purchase Pre Cut Picture Mats of various sizes or you can purchase Mat Board and cut your own mats to any size.

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and metal
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Picture mats

Some custom picture framers can do some pretty fancy jobs of cutting curly cues and doo hickeys in mats, but, just my opinion, I think you can get a little carried away with the fancy stuff on a mat and start to detract from the art work that it surrounds.

Pre-cut Mats

Mat Board and Matting Materials

The custom picture framer is the other artist

The custom picture framer is known as the other artist and as the other artist you should keep in mind that your work is to make a container for art work, photos and other pictures and it should be unobtrusive and should be of such quality to draw the mind, the eye and whole being to the art work and to make the framing invisible to thought.

Matting art on consignment

We sold art on consignment and once a photographer brought in two 16x20 copies of a photograph he had taken and wanted them matted and framed differently so they might appeal to different people.

Different Photo Mat Colors

We used entirely different photo mat colors on each of the pictures. The photo was a winter forest scene just after sunrise with a definite mist in the air. There were trees on each side, on the left the trees meandered out of the picture before they got to the foreground. On the right the trees came into the foreground at the side of the picture and there was a wide path through the trees to an opening with more trees in the distance. There was snow on the ground with a blue-gray cast. There were evergreen trees mixed with other trees that had lost their leaves and some had a grayish winterish appearance.

Photo matted and framed with brown.

We matted and framed one of the photos with a light brown inner mat and a darker brown outer mat and a medium width brownish natural finish wood frame.

The other photo matted and framed with gray.

The other photo was matted and framed framed with a light gray inner mat, darker gray outer mat and a medium width rustic frame with a driftwood gray finish. (we made our own rustic frame molding and I'll tell you how to make it on another page).

Same picture perceived differently

We hung the pictures side by side and there were a large number of people who looked at the pictures for long periods and commented on what beautiful pictures they were and were amazed when we pointed out that they were copies of the same picture. The mat and frame had made so much difference in how your mind perceived the picture that they appeared to be two different pictures.

The picture with the brown matting and picture frame tended to draw your attention to the lower right of the picture, where the trees were large and dominant, whereas the picture with the gray mat and driftwood picture frame tended to draw your eye and mind down the path to the clearing at the center of the picture .

There is a lot more about picture matting to come, so be sure to bookmark us and come back frequently. We'll cover color selection and lots of tricks to cut your own single and double mats with some very inexpensive do it yourself home built equipment.

mat cutters

Professional equipment for superior matting.

Photo Mat Cutting Systems Logan 301S Compact Mat Cutter