Watercolor Art

I recently took a beginners watercolor class at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I have always loved watercolor as a medium and find myself drawn to watercolor pieces in galleries and on Pinterest. Having just moved into a new apartment, I began searching for affordable watercolor images of blue hydrangeas to hang above the bed in my bedroom. Sure, I came across lots of blue hydrangeas but none that really captured my vision.

Image: gardenblooms on Etsy

Armed with my watercolor paints, brushes and the techniques I had recently been taught, I painted my own hydrangeas! I cheated a little bit and drew out the flower with an ink marker on watercolor paper before putting down color.

Actually... here's something I learned during this project - the ink markers tend to bleed when they come in contact with water. So with this project I had to be careful to stay in the lines, and in some places the color looks muddled. But it's nothing I couldn't live with.

I happen to love the look of color outside of the lines (example to the right), so next time I would probably use a permanent marker, or freehand to try and achieve the look.

I would say I'm 90% happy with the finished project. I hung the pieces in white frames with white matting. I love how the frames and headboard pop against the dark grey wall (the entire room is painted this color - it's called Cement by Martha Stewart). Please don't hate me for the terrible pictures btw, I rely on my iPhone rather than an SLR.

Plus, I figure I can always take another stab at this art project if I'm feeling inspired. I'm actually moving again in a few weeks and the BF requested that we hang some more gender-neutral pieces above the bed. I'm still brainstorming what we will replace the hydrangeas with, but I painted something new last night that makes me pretty happy. Maybe it's the fact that the 4th of July is coming up, or that the USA is doing well in the World Cup. Who knows.

~ Alicia