Trompe L’Oeil Project / Front Door by Matthew Holden Bates

Front Door Project

For a while now I have been working on making my apartment a fun place to be. The front door / hall area was a bit dreary, my apartment is half underground so the lighting can be very dark, especially in the front hall. I decided to take matters into my own hands and spice the place up. Here is what it used to look like:

Firenze is such a beautiful place, with so many cool buildings. Palazzo Medici Riccardi is one of them. The courtyard is an iconic Renaissance environment. I thought, why not make it look like I live there? So I went to the Palazzo and took some preparation photos. From there I took it into Photoshop and started to play around here is what I came up with:

Then I got to work. Since this was a pretty straight forward Project, one that is not on canvas, I was able to simply draw in the design using measuring techniques, I made a numeric grid and drew it all in. Here is what the door looked like during the beginning of the project with just a little bit painted in:

When I finished to door I decided to keep on going and paint the wall next to the door. In Firenze one of the main buildings is the city hall, Palazzo Vecchio. It is over 700 years old and has many beautiful rooms. One of the is the Sala dei Gigli. Here is a picture of that room:

I thought it would be cool to make the same pattern on my wall. I thought about making a stencil, but the wall was too uneven, so I just painted the pattern of the Giglio one by one. Here I am hard at work:

During the time I was working on this project I was reflecting on my idea of faith. It occurred to me that everyone has their own personal understanding of what faith is. So I did a little soul searching and realized that there are very few things that I will not change my mind about, one of those things is which sports teams I will follow in my life. I grew up in Washington, D.C. I was a teenager in the 80s, and the Redskins were good back then. I became a life long fan, and even though I don’t follow them like I did when I was a kid, I will certainly never be a fan of any other football team. My other team is Firenze’s Soccer team, Fiorentina. I decided that I should include in my door representations of my faith, one side for the Redskins and the other side for Fiorentina. Here are the details:

Batistuta celebrating after a goal by Matthew Holden Bates

Riggins running for the winning touchdown on 4th down in the Super bowl by Matthew Holden Bates

I must say that this project was a blast! I had fun all the way through, and now everyday it is a part of my life. Unlike paintings on canvas, this type of project stays in one place. It became part of my apartment, and added so much life to my front hall.

I’ll be getting back to my Duomo Project tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be posting something soon about that. If you are new to my blog and would like to see more go ahead and follow me on Steemit @matteopaints . Upvotes are always appreciated, and resteems are awesome!! 😎 I have made a few other walls in my apartment come to life and I will feature them in the future, so stay tuned!!

A presto, Matteo 👋