Doors of Jávea, a side project years in the making.
Doors of Jávea is my illustrated collection of the doors and windows of Jávea, a coastal town on the Costa Blanca in Spain. It sat in a Figma file for years. This autumn I finally finished it, and found a new way of drawing along the way.
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An idea that sat in a Figma file.
A few years ago I came across José Guízar’s Windows of New York, a site of illustrated windows from around the city, each one drawn flat and straight on. I loved it, and I kept thinking the same idea would work here in Jávea. So I opened a Figma file, called it Doors of Jávea, drew one door and then got busy with client work. It sat there for years.
The door that started it.
That first door was La Puerta Azul at Cala Portixol, probably the most photographed door in town. It’s still the first thing you see on the site, and it always will be.
Walking the town.
Jávea is Xàbia in Valencian. The town sits in the Valencian Community, where Valencian and Spanish are both spoken, which is why you’ll see both names, and why the Doors of Jávea site comes in English, Spanish and Valencian.
The collection comes from walks through the old town, the port and the hills around the Montgó. Every street has a door that stops you: a hatch painted sea blue, a red door in a blue frame, a hardwood arch in a whitewashed wall.
One set of rules.
Every door is drawn the same way. Flat, straight on, with light from the upper left and halftone dots for texture and shade. Keeping the rules tight is what makes 7 separate drawings feel like one collection. It’s the same thing we do with brand systems for clients: decide the rules once, and everything after gets easier.
Prompting as a paintbrush.
I’ve been designing on screens for over 30 years, mostly with a mouse, a pen and whatever software was current at the time. This project is the first time I’ve worked a different way.
Every door starts with a walk and a photo. I upload my photos to Claude, which picks out the colours and reads the location, so I know exactly which neighbourhood each door belongs to.
Then I draw the first version myself. That’s where each door gets its character: the proportions, what to leave out, how the light falls.
From there, Claude helps me refine it. It doesn’t generate images. It works on my drawing as code, shape by shape, so every change happens to my drawing, in my style.
It’s a two-way process. Some changes I describe in words. “Make the bougainvillea one loose mass, not a row of bushes.” “That shadow’s falling the wrong way.” “Curl the tips of the stems up towards the sun.” Others I make by hand in Figma, or straight in the SVG, nudging shapes, colours and dots until they look right. Usually it’s a mix of both in the same round.
After a while, the prompts stopped feeling like instructions and started feeling like a brush. Instead of hunting through menus and dragging handles, I say what I see and what I want, and the drawing moves. My eye still decides when it’s finished. I just get there with less clicking.
The style is mine, built up one door at a time. Whatever I learn on one door carries over to the next. La Buganvilla is where I worked out how to draw plants, so every door with greenery now starts from there.
From a photo to the shop, in one go.
Adding a door used to mean a long list of jobs. Draw it, export it, make web images, build a page, set up products, make print files, mock up frames, then write a post. Now Claude works through that list with me.
Once I’m happy with the drawing, the door gets its own page in English, Spanish and Valencian, and the site redeploys on Netlify.
On the shop side, every door shares the same 3 products in our Super Threads shop on Shopify: a PDF, a poster and a framed poster. Claude adds the new door as an option on each one, creates the print files at every size, makes framed mockups in oak, white and black, and links everything to Printful so orders print and ship on their own. It even sets up the shipping.
The last step is an Instagram post and caption for @doors.of.javea, ready for me to check and publish.
Your door, illustrated.
If you have a front door you love, you can send a photo and I’ll draw it in the same style. With your permission, it joins the collection.
New doors appear as I find them. Have a look at doorsofjavea.com.
