A local grocery store sells brand new kitchen cabinet doors that were drilled on the wrong side for 99 cents. I came into three of them and thought for a month or so about what I wanted to do with them.
My first thought was to cut them up and turn them into project wood, but I decided to create a three panel painting instead.
After going through idea after idea, I landed on the Hydra logo from Marvel comics and movies.
While mocking up the painting on my PC, I went through several different color schemes and layouts. I landed on this one:
I put the outline of the hydra into Microsoft Visio and laid out the image exactly as I wanted it to appear, printed it out, taped everything together, and mocked it up.
Unfortunately, while this was exactly what I had planned for and it looked great on the computer, when it was mocked up on the wood, I realized it didn't look right. The outer circle around the logo was not lining up the way I wanted, so I played with the image and eventually came up with this digital mock up, which took into account the frames and even the color of the wall it would hang on. I also toyed with gold outlining, which I didn't complete on the design.
I mocked it up on the wood again and decided that was the right size and position, so I went on to paint.
First coat: primer
Second coat: base color
Next, mask off and transfer image to the tape. I do this in a very unsophisticated way. I take my mock up and use a pencil to darkly color on the back side of the image. Then I position that on the project and trace the image with a ball point pen, pressing slightly harder than normal writing. This leaves a pencil outline on the tape.
Trim the tape with a razor blade or exacto knife and we're ready for the top coat, which is black.
With the black done, I decided to hang the painting until I had a chance to get the gold paint and do the outline.
I hand painted the gold outline and this is the finished product.
There are a few more touch ups to do, and I may even change the project around completely, but for now, this is the finished product.
I learned a key lesson on this project. The spray primer that covers oil stains and the spray primer that does not cover oil stains are almost identical. The only difference on the can is some small letters on the from of the can. Consequently, I accidentally purchased the wrong primer, which resulted in some paint peeling off on the right panel, but I was able to correct that by buying the correct primer and spot paining where the paint had peeled off. I won't make that mistake again.
