By Erin Wallace and Julia Watson
Sycamore City Reporters
Although Girls State is known for leadership and government, creativity still managed to find its way into the week, thanks to the door decorating competition. Armed with construction paper, markers, and a dream, my roommate, Julia Watson, and I set out to create the most legendary dorm door design in Girls State history.
What began as a quick arts and crafts project quickly spiraled into a full-blown masterpiece, complete with blood, sweat, tears, and, most importantly, an unbelievable amount of time.
I, Erin Wallace, am unfortunately not an artistic person by any means. So, that meant a large chunk of the process was unduly given to Julia— although I would like to credit myself for creating the beautiful name letters and ombre background.
Julia set out to create our vision: a Wide West cowgirl riding her trusted horse. Since we first arrived at Girls State on Sunday, Julia had been working day and night to create a realistic rendition of our imagination.
She finally completed the multiple page longer design on Wednesday. Since then, I have shamelessly been showing off our amazing design to anyone who was willing to look.
While I handled the buzzing publicity, Julia was the one who truly brought the magic to life. Since she’s the mastermind behind our wonderful door, I’ll let her take it from here.
I, Julia Watson, came into Girls State excited to showcase my talents in order to assist my city’s visual appeal.
From a young age, I’ve always loved doing art. However, most of my art involves a small piece of paper or canvas. Therefore, the greatest challenge going into door decorating was the size of the art piece.
To navigate this issue, I began the lengthy decorating process by sketching out my ideas on a small piece of paper.
Once I got my general idea drafted, I taped different pieces of paper together to roughly align with the size and colors of the final piece. Then, I sketched out the cowgirl and her horse, spending the most time on her face.
Even sketching took a decent amount of time and work over a couple days. I had to focus on making each component proportionate to one another. For example, once I completed sketching the head, I had to adjust the size of the torso to match.
Once it was sketched out, I outlined my pencil marks with black marker. Once the ink was dry, I erased all pencil marking. As for coloring, I used a variety of materials. To color the face, I used colored pencils to build warmth and depth, and bring life to the face. For the shading on the horse and shirt, however, I used markers to save time.
After completing the coloring stage, Finn and I began cutting out and taping the figure onto the gradient background.
Once we had finished attaching the drawing to the door, I realized that it was lacking a lot of details. To conceal parts of the drawing that appeared awkward or unfinished, I cut a variety of green papers into grass. This added dimension, color, and visual interest to the overall design of our door.
To conclude, the final product wouldn’t be what it is without both of our contributions to decorating and planning. Though it took a long time to create, the end result was well worth the effort.
Additionally, working on the door served as a time where I could relax and unwind from a very chaotic and challenging day. Overall, I really enjoyed working on it, and I cannot wait to see what we can do to further enhance our city.