Presenting your drawings

Formal drawings are working documents, so they need to be looked after and presented in such a way that anyone can read them.

Mounting work

Mounting drawings on paper or card makes them more durable and accessible.

• Surface mounting is where the drawing is fixed directly to another piece of paper or card.
• Double mounting uses two different colours of backing material.
• Window mounting is where a hole is cut into a piece of card, then a drawing is mounted behind the card, in the window (like a picture frame).
• A useful technique is heat-sealing or laminating, where the artwork is placed in a transparent plastic pocket and fed into a machine with heated rollers that seal the plastic over the artwork.
• When mounting onto card, avoid using liquid glues - sprays, rubber-based adhesives and double-sided tape are all better methods. Adhesive sticks are useful for small pieces of work.

Coloured backgrounds

A pale coloured background may sometimes help with the presentation of a drawing. This can be done using coloured paper or card, a colourwash [colourwash: the application of colour to a drawing, normally done using watercolour paint and intended to give a pale tint to a drawing. ], pastels, or computer graphics applications.

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