Frames

May 29, 2014

For my family portraits consisting of objects, I actually want them to resemble actual family portraits that you may see on a wall at home. I wanted the frames mismatched, but as all the frames in the exhibition are to be white, I’ll spray them down with white spray paint or paint them myself. I want to display them in a “random” collage to add to the homely mismatched feel, but I still want them to look sleek.

I was in luck with the first charity shop I went to, I was able to get all 5 frames that I needed for under £10 and they were all different. I then purchased white gloss spray paint from the £1 shop and got to work back at college. The first frame I sanded down and applied one coat of the spray paint. Then after waiting for the paint to dry, I applied a second coat. The frame was looking great so far. But as it began to dry even more, the paint started the peel significantly. It was coming off like PVA glue would on my hands.

 

So again I sanded it down and took 3 of the sanded frames home to hand paint a base layer of matt emulsion on them to see if the gloss spray paint would stick to them better then.

But alas! The hours spent painting these frames, and being covered in paint did not pay off and the spray paint didn’t want to cooperate. It wasnt laying smoothly and in some areas it bubbled quite badly. In the end, these frames just looked tacky and were definitely not looking good enough to be put up in the exhibition. Feeling like I was back to square one, I tried to think of something that could save my work and my idea.

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