Making a Border for a Still Life Drawing

Video Transcript

"I have chosen to do an eight by ten that I'm going to frame and so when you do a drawing that you think you're going to frame the area that's going to be shown is eight by ten, eight inches by ten inches. But to put it in a frame you have to account for what is behind the actual mat so when you frame it, it has something to hold on to or it will fall through the mat. So basically what I'm going to do is I'm just going to measure over, I'm going to add. You can add a quarter inch each side on all four sides but to be safe let's just do a half inch on each side. So a half inch on the width is going to be nine inches wide and then, I'm using the factory edge of the paper so I know it's going to be a straight line. And then I'm going to measure up eleven inches because I've added a half an inch on each end. And I'll just do this. And I'll go ahead and make my line. And then I've marked ten inches up here and eleven inches up here and I'm drawing my straight line. And now I want to go in a half an inch because that's going to be the actual part that we see once we put it in the frame. So I can use this clear ruler which is pretty cool because you can see that there is a half inch and you can actually see it through the ruler. So what I do is I just take and get it a half inch inside of this and then I can set it up to where it's a half inch here and a half inch here. So basically, I'm just going to come down, draw a line, and do the same thing on this end. Stop at the half inch. We're going to come over here and do the same exact thing. And, finally, I will do the top. So once we do that, this will be the actual drawing area but this will be the area that sits behind the frame that kind of holds it in place. And that's how you set up your paper for the frame and getting it ready because this is a large piece of paper and for beginning drawing I don't need all this paper."