On the day after Thanksgiving, I took my cat to the vet (like I do every Friday), and one of the employees was painting a mural on their front windows. That inspired me to try doing a little Christmas window painting of my own. When I was in high school, I used to draw Garfield all the time. He was sort of my go-to doodle. Also, when my kids were little, they loved to watch the Garfield Christmas movie. So, I thought that painting Garfield on my door would be a fun way to tap into a little of my creative side with a nod to family history at the same time. I think he turned out pretty good.
I started by finding a Christmas picture of Garfield online. Then I sketched him out in my sketchbook. I then scanned my drawing into the computer, enlarged the image to a size that would fit my window, and printed it out. I had thought that I would tape the print out to the inside of the window and then trace it on the outside using a dry erase marker, but that didn't really work because of the nature of the window. It has two panes of glass with blinds in between. That made the image seem too far away to actually trace, so I just used it as a placement guide and drew it free hand with the marker.
We wanted the image to be seen from both inside and outside, so I went over the outlines in black first. Then I added the color, and then went over the black line again last thing. I tried chalk markers first, but I didn't like how that looked (too thin and runny), so I used artist acrylic paint instead. All of the colors needed 3 coats to really show up nicely.
I'm thinking about trying something larger on my storm door at my front door (this door goes to the carport). If I do that one, I'm planning to try using interior wall paint and starting with a base of white. It won't be viewable from inside, but that doesn't matter on that door, and I hope it will have better coverage that way.
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