How to choose a Matt for a painting

How To Choose a Matt for a Painting

Don't

1. Pick the color of your Couch, Curtain ,or your dogs Poopy box, and then use it as one of the matt colors.
2. Don't have a preconceived idea of the color you want to use.
3. Don't pick an obvious color
4. Don't try to make it match your room, focus on the painting only, not the room.

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Choosing a Color

1. When you choose a color for a matt you want to choose the 4th, or 5th dominate color. Not the 1st or 2nd or 3rd dominate color.

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2. The painting either matches your room or it doesn't. If you try to make it match the room, you will be adding a color that will overpower the painting.

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3. Choose a color, based on the painting, not on the room.

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What is the Goal

The goal its to pick colors that become invisible. When you look at the painting you won't even notice the matt colors. You chose this painting ,for that room, because the colors in the painting matched the colors in the room. So there is nothing that you can do to make the painting not match, because it already matches. What you can do, is pick colors that draw the eye away from the painting and onto the color you chose. Yuk!

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How to tell if the colors are right

Put the sample Matt's on the painting. Go to the opposite side of where you have the Matt's. Stand a couple feet back. Focus intently on the center of the painting. Because you are standing a few feet back, you will be also also see the Matt colors. Now, can your eye stay focused on the painting. If it can, you chose the right colors. The Matt colors should disappear

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If your eye is drawn to the Matt color, you chose too strong a color, or a color that doesn't quite match.

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Still having trouble? Then go to the opposite side and view the painting a couple feet back, looking over top of the Matt.

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Still Having Trouble

Your preconceptions of the colors that you wanted, are getting in the way.
Leave it to a Professional and call Dr. Phil!

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DO:

Original watercolor fall trees painting
By Artist Derek Collins
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In the first example is a light Olive, you may not like the color, but get the concept. It is a green,but it is not the dominate green. It's an in between color. It's not yellow, but it pulls some of the yellows, it also pulls some of the lighter greens that you probably didn't notice , because of the overpowering darker greens in the painting

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The second example is just the opposite of the first one. The Matt color reads more as a light yellow, but maybe has a slight cast of Light green. It also goes with the yellow, and the green in the painting. But this color is not the dominate Yellow in the painting. It is a lighter paler yellow.

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NOT!

This is an example of a common practice. A lot of people like to use a Maroon, it does match, but you can't look at the painting without your eye being drawn to the Maroon Mat. You would also get this unappealing effect, if you had chosen the dominate, bright yellow, or the Bright green .

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Tip

I have been framing my own paintings to sell for 25 years. Even for me, it is easy to to have a certain mind set towards certain painting, which makes it difficult to find a matt that works. You just can't get past the colors that you have in your mind. If you run into one that you are having a problem with. Try all the different color groups. You may find one of those in between colors that you were totally not expecting.

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Happy matting, Derek