Another 'Doorways' painting.

I've had a strange couple of months - we sold our house at the end of July and have house sat for some friends for a few weeks and have now moved to my mum's. Our new house will be ready soon, I'm looking forward to living there. It's a bungalow, so my life should be a bit easier as I'll have no stairs to deal with :)

As a consequence, I've not had many opportunities to paint, but today it's my BFF's birthday today, so I've painted something for her. It's the entrance to where we stayed for her birthday last year; here's the photo I've based the painting on:

 

Here's part way through painting:

I painted the mortar of the bricks first, then used a small fitch brush to paint individual bricks, changing the colours as I went to reflect the differing colours of the bricks. 

The I painted the door: 

Even though I was going to be covering parts of the door in greenery I wanted to paint the whole door so that it could show through. 

Next, I shaded in background greenery and painted the lace at the window:

I just scrubbed the paint on, as I was planning on over painting it to do the detail of the plants.

I then painted in the plants - ivy at the top and bottom on the right, conifer in the middle and on the left. I enjoyed painting this, it was very relaxing!

The whole painting:

Top:

Bottom:

My friend seemed pleased with it :)