"THE BLUE DOOR" Cranbrook
There is a door in the one of the gardens at Cranbrook that I have wanted to turn into a painting for years. Finally got around to it this week. This door always makes me think of the entrance to the "The Secret Garden" in the children's classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
I an developing a digital painting process using my own photo reference to create landscapes and portraits with deep dimension and emotional impact. I have hundreds of images taken for reference over the years, but only recently have I felt ready to create the paintings that I was seeing in my mind's eye.
The concept here was to create the feeling of a magical door that has suddenly appeared as an entrance to a secret garden. Mystery and enticement are suggested in the super saturated colors which lift the original photograph out of the ordinary and transform the scene into a painting depicting a timeless fantasy.
This unmanipulated photo shows potential but the gray April day on which it was taken flattened the tonal range and subdued color intensities. As a painter I focus on taking images that may seem lackluster as photographs but show potential as paintings.
