Building a Crate For Shipping a Large Painting

One of the scariest things ever is having someone else deliver a painting to a client. Add to that: paintings are sticky, one-of-a-kind, have part of your very soul in them, and are very fragile. They are often nothing more than a wooden window with a thin layer of cloth stretched across it, and all that's valuable about it is applied to one side of this vulnerable film.

All of these things were foremost on my mind even before I started painting the 32" x 40" oil portrait to ship 1500 miles away from my studio.

I made the following video using Google Sketch-up (it was the first thing I ever did in Sketch-up, so pardon the glaring errors...) and posted it on my blog Everyday Paintings along with a number of supporting photographs and comments, describing how and why I built my crate the way I did. You can read all the details at the specific blog enrty Crate Expectations. (Yeah, I made that up, too).