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Sometimes in artwork what isn't said can be just as important (or even more important!) than what *is* said. Choosing to omit something becomes a statement about that thing in and of itself. For instance, if I drew a self-portrait but chose to leave out the eyes while finishing everything else, the viewer would begin to wonder what I'm saying with my lack-of-eyes.

In the same way, the way we choose to display our art feeds into the statement that the art is making. If you have a Rembrandt-esque painting but you choose to display it without a frame or matte, you've suddenly spoken to your audience about the lack of a frame. We often don't realize how important the presentation of a piece of artwork is until we see it done - or do it wrong - ourselves.

In my drawing classes we would talk extensively about how to display our artwork. My teachers always made it clear that when you are professionally displaying your artwork you need to make sure that the frame, matte, or border doesn't distract or detract from the statements made in the artwork. So if I had a low-key, low-contrast drawing using a lot of neutral tones (browns, blacks, and grays) it would be a poor choice to frame it in a bright purple matte; or if I had a drawing with a bunch of high-key, high-contrast colors I still wouldn't want to use that bright purple matte because suddenly the purple in the matte is interacting with the colors in the drawing and pushing or shifting them in different directions than I had planned.

The rule-of-thumb that I learned throughout all of my courses - drawing, sculpting, color theory, and photography - is that "when in doubt, white or black." White and black are the least "interactive" of all the colors, and you're least likely to upset the color and tone balance of a picture when you frame it in black or white.

Of course, there's always exceptions to the rules, which is why I did a little experiment with today's page. Thanks to a conversation with Grescon on DA, I realized that some of my viewers were reading the white borders of my comic as being blank and unfinished. Grescon was so kind as to make a background texture for my comic to see if using anything other than a white border would help bring it all together. Thanks again, Grescon!!!

This is the "traditional" version of my page; white borders.

And I tell ya what, I'm still on the fence with the whole thing. While I can understand how a white border would read as "blank", when I look at the version with Grescon's border the colors begin to shift toward the darker end of the spectrum and the purples and blues I use for shading begin to pop a lot more than I had originally intended. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the border, or with my art - it's just colors being colors and eyeballs and brains being eyeballs and brains. I'm also still uncertain if I would continue to use any sort of colored border because I like having the choice of being able to fade from white to black when the mood of the pages change.

So I'm going to have to see how things pan out with the next few pages!

What do you guys think? Here is the version of the page with the border by Grescon