preparing for show submission

I'm trying to get three good pieces together for submission to a juried show. I thought I should submit my figure painting, my coffee still life, and my "erupting tree" as a good sampling of the variety of subjects I like to do.

To get the pieces gallery ready, I need to either frame the paintings or paint the sides nicely with a solid color. Since framing is expensive (and unnecessary for a contemporary show, in my opinion), I'm opting for painting the sides.

The tree painting's sides are a 1:1 mixture of alizarin crimson and ultramarine, and it blends pretty nicely into the violet background of the actual painting. This is my only hand-stretched canvas, so the edges are much deeper than the other ones (which are W&N Deep Edge 1.5").

My figure painting's edges (you can't really see the color in this picture) are some weird, complex mix of Indian red and yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine, naples, cadmium deep, burnt umber and white -- I have no idea how I replicated it twice for two coats. I think it works pretty well with the main image since it combines all the most prominent colors I used.















I've heard you're supposed to go with a neutral or neutral-dark color for your paintings' edges, but I thought a really deep, vibrant red (cadmium deep + a tiny bit of alizarin crimson and cadmium light) would pull the coffee still life together nicely.

I'm impatient (to a fault) when it comes to painting, so having to do a lot of waiting and second coats was a new experience. Next, I have to install wire on the pieces for hanging and actually think up some titles for them.