A Creative Journal of an Artist: How to store small size paper artworks

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

How to store small size paper artworks

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and followers!

When it gets close to the end of the year, I go through my artworks to organize and store them. These are generally the finished artworks, sketches, studies, some unfinished ones and some for giveaways. Obviously, I cannot frame all the finished ones. The cost wouldn't be feasible. But I would like some paintings available for easy viewing for studio visitors.

I did my research and found out a good way to display and conserve safely my painted on paper artworks . Professional artists use crystal clear bags and a hard cardboard to display and store them. These are high quality clear bags with an adhesive flap seal. They are acid-free and archival safe. They come in an huge array of sizes. I ordered a few different sizes from Ebay. If the artwork is smaller than the bag size I fold the extra part at the back and tape it nicely. Also, I put a sticker on the cardboard with my contact information.

crystal clear bags

back of the artwork

an example with clear bag

This method works for my watercolor, linocut, oil pastel, color pencil and sketch artworks. One thing, though, maybe I am a little picky, but I prefer not to put my soft pastel artworks into plastic sleeves. Because they get some residual pastel dust on the inside of the bag and it looks cloudy. For me the best way to conserve soft pastel artworks is putting a thin acid-free parchment paper on each layer of artwork and keep them flat in drawers.