Border or No Border Around Your Sketches?
A simple ink border.
I like to leave a border around my sketches/paintings. If I think I’m just going to ink a drawing, I’ll typically draw a line border around the sketch or start out with a rectangle in which I do my sketch. If I know I’m going to paint a scene, I try to always lay down artist tape (or painters tape, any tape that won’t pull up some of the paper surface) around the edges of my sketchbook page. I love the crisp edge this creates when I remove the tape after a watercolor painting dries. It’s one of the reasons, too, that I made my custom, DIY sketchbooks 7 1/2” x 5” (19x13cm). The spiral binding leaves 7” (18cm) for my painting, so with 1/2” (13mm) wide tape that leaves 6” x4” (15x10cm) for my painting and this fits nicely in an 10”x8” (25x20cm) mat should I want to remove it and frame it or make prints of it.
Note the white artist tape around the edge of page.
No pre-planned border!
However, sometimes I’ll do a sketch that turns out better than I expected and/or I didn’t plan to paint and I’ve made no border with ink or tape. That frustrates me. I’ve pledged, for similar reasons, to only sketch on quality paper and I’m adhering to that. Now I need to pledge to always put a tape border - or, at least, leave a 1/2” space - on my sketchbook page before starting any sketch! You can see examples in the accompanying images that I launched into the sketches of the German church and the Main Street construction without leaving room for a border. Conversely, when I did the sketch of our garage, I did put tape around the edge and you can see in the image of the final sketch what a difference that makes!
See the nice crisp, 1/2” border around the finished painting?
David Steeden sketches/paintings.
Many sketchers, however, purposely use the whole page for their sketches and paintings. Many, in fact, do two-page spreads and paint all the way to all edges. Clearly, with my spiral bound sketchbooks I can’t do the latter though I can, say, in my Moleskine Art Watercolour sketchbook. But that’s not my style. David Steeden is a British sketcher I admire and follow on Instagram and Facebook. I love David’s loose style of sketching and aspire to make my own sketching similar. As you can see from the two sketches of David’s I’ve included (with his permission) he, too, uses the whole page and paints to the edge. Not always to the edge but the point is, he doesn’t create a precise border. (Instagram: @davidsteedenart; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.steeden.5.)
What’s your preference? Border or no border?
