What To Do? What To Do?

What do you do with a big, old vault door that dominates a wall?  It's kinda hard to hide, isn't it?  Putting a couch in front of it won't do the trick.

So you paint around it instead!!!  And not just boring wall paint, but a mural!!  And what's best, is you actually incorporate the vault door into the  mural, by turning it into the entrance to an old mine.

Then, you go to the local lumber yard and pick out some rough timbers to wrap the door with.  This picture only shows the side pieces.  There will be a piece across the top too.

What's really spiffy, is our particular lumber yard has o-o-old  half-logs laying around, and you can get weathered looking wood with cool knots, like this one.

My dad told me that there's actually some historical precedence for putting a vault door over a mine.  Evidently the Cresson Mine in Cripple Creek was originally a poor producer, until the owner found a room size opening bursting with gold.  He immediately went and had a vault door installed at the entrance of the mine.  I went searching to see if this story was true, and found this on Wikipedia:

 On 24 Nov. 1914, Dick Roelofs was supervising the exploration of the mine to the 1300 level, when a large gold-filled vug was blasted open on the 1200 level. The next day, Roelof, a mine owner and an attorney explored the "cave of sparkling jewels". The vug measured 14 feet wide, 23 feet long, 36 feet high, which took a month to empty, and yielded 60,000 troy ounces of gold.^[10]:78-80

This particular vault door doesn't protect any gold.  It was already in the house when the current owners bought it.  In fact, I think perhaps the vault is now protecting cardboard boxes!!  Whatever's on the inside, this is the final result of what I painted on the outside!

Killing Time

There's a very odd truth in an artist's life that when you've got real work to do, it's like pulling teeth to get started.  I've got two small commissions waiting to be done.  I know what I'm going to paint.  I've even got the preliminary sketches done.  But can I get started?!  Can I wrangle myself into beginning?  Can I actually get the paint out of the tubes and on to the palette?  It's the strangest phenomenon.  I was just talking to an artist friend, and she's experiencing the same thing.  Bother this twaddling!!

In the in-between time, I hauled out this pencil sketch I did over a year ago and decided it needed ink and colored pencil added to it.  So why is it I can work on this little trifle, but I can't actually make progress on a bona fide job?!

It's a mystery.

Time For A Change

Nobody likes change.  I only like it when I get to gut and improve a really ugly house.  But when it comes to getting rid of the canvases at my church, nobody likes it... at least judging from the reactions I get!  The last set WAS beautiful.  And it WASN'T great fun painting over them.  But change is good.  And God keeps track, for what it's worth.

So the new set is done!  See if you're up on your geography:

I will say it again: the lighting in the worship center is not fabulous for taking color-accurate pictures, but you get the idea!  My favorite is this last one showing the whole globe.

One lovely trick that I just learned:  when you do your lettering on graph paper, then it's much easier to make sure it's level when projected!!  You just put your level against the lines of the graph paper!  No measuring over and over and over...  It's complicated to explain, so just rejoice with me, even if it makes no sense!!

So, how was your geography knowledge?  The map behind Acts 1:8 shows the streets in my small mountain town.   I wanted to show the people of my church that WE LIVE IN the remotest part of the earth, and WE ARE TO BE JESUS' WITNESSES WHERE WE LIVE!