Another Black Frame

Diane's been working on her Square Foot of Art concept where she will paint a series of three related paintings on a 12" x 12" piece of board.  One of the series is coffee related and since the painting have lots of texture, she felt the frame should mimic that.  Painting it black really isolates the subject.  Here's an image of one in that series:

The way I made this frame was to start with a piece of 5/4 Poplar.  After shaping the sight edge, the frame was cut at a 10 degree angle.  The panel was simply dadoed out to make a shallow groove about an inch plus wide.  After mitering and joining the pieces I applied 4 coats of traditional gesso to fill in and obscure the grain of the wood.  The final step was to thicken the gesso with more whiting after the last coat, apply that to the panel only and use a comb to give it the texture.  It gives the frame movement and life which compliments the pictures nicely.  Here's a close up of the frame:

The next set of three will be the steamed Beech, dyed black that I showed a couple of posts ago.  Have the material but haven't started cutting into it yet.  Good news though, this afternoon I'm off to give a private lesson on using the wood lathe to a man who found me on the internet.  Looking forward to it, he just bought a beautiful lathe.  I've always thought that I too would like to have a lathe but -- no room and I really want to continue working towards mastering flat work and carving.  So much to learn, so little time!