Watercolor Project on Pinterest - Saw It/Tried It!

Recently I've been looking on Pinterest for ideas for Sophia and Olivia for the upcoming 4-H county fair. One of the ideas I found was a watercolor painting that Olivia wanted to try. The original pin on Pinterest led to Artsonia.

Olivia's finished watercolor painting.

According to Artsonia, "American artist, Jasper Johns was the inspiration [for this art project]. He is known for his drawing and painting numbers in an abstracted way."

One of Jasper Johns' paintings.

 Photo source.

To do this project, Olivia first drew a spiral in pencil on her watercolor paper.

Drawing a spiral.

Then, she wrote the alphabet multiple times around the spiral, with the top of the letters touching the spiral. Some of the letters are close together, while others are spread out more.

Adding the letters.

The next step was to use watercolor paint to fill in the shapes that were part of the letter as well as that were created by the space between the letters.

Painting the spaces.

Olivia painted a variety of colors in random spots so they would be spread across the spiral.

Adding more color.

When the piece was dry, she took a thick Sharpie marker and outlined each letter and the spiral. It was amazing how much the defined, black line added to the picture.

The letters and spiral outlined with 

a black Sharpie marker.

Artsonia also noted that pieces done like this "look like stained glass. Rose windows, from the Renaissance period" were looked at so Olivia could compare and contrast her work with these antique windows.

Olivia thought the project a lot of work to do (this took many days for her to complete). However, the result was worth it. She is very happy with how it turned out.

Olivia with her finished painting.

She will be entering it into the "fine arts" category of the 4-H county fair.