This semester I enrolled in Painting 1 for fun and have decided to change my major to art (after falling in love with it through art appreciation and drawing 1)! One of my favorite projects I’ve been working on during this class has been my door paintings. My professor told us we didn’t have to only paint on canvas, so I put some thought into how creative I wanted be. I remembered a door that was propped up against a wall in my church and the gears in my brain started to turn. After I got the ok to take the door, I just had to figure out what I was going to do with it. I’ve found when it comes to portrait taking, prom season is my favorite because girls in dresses are so much fun to photograph! So I figured if I enjoy photographing them, I’d probably enjoy painting them just as much, and I was right!
My first model was my good friend Madalaine Lane. I always love taking pictures of Maddy! She is so photogenic and just tons of fun! We met up at our church and had to start the pictures in the sanctuary because of rain. After we got the shot I wanted the rain had stop and we headed outside and took some twirly pictures in her beautiful Anthropology dress for fun. I began the painting as soon as I could and spent a lot of happy and angry moments with it. I was planning on leaving the background white, but my professor prompted me not to and I am so glad I took his advice! This one took me about three and a half weeks to finish.
After I finished the first door it was a little sad because I enjoyed it so much. But a few days later I got lucky at the highway 80 sale. I found a 2 small cabinet doors (which I’ll be using later) and a long cabinet door all for $2 each! I got with my friend Hope Hughes the next day and got some photos done out at the dam on Lake Hawkins. She’s just so darn cute and such a goober, so of course it was a good time. I started painting the next day after I sanded the glossy finish on the cabinet. I cranked this one out really quickly and I loved the results!
I was given another full size door which was super exciting! I set up a time with a girl, but we could just never get the time to work out and I was dying to get started so I got with my beautiful friend Katie (who I would have painted eventually anyway) and we took pictures about an hour later. We danced around rain, which stop just long enough for us to take pictures, and went down to a dock out at lake Hawkins. I got the door painted and done in about three weeks. I think the wash on this one is my favorite.
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