Watercolor Skyline

Today I am back to share a new addition to our living room.  Awhile ago I pinned this inspiration pic to my living room board on Pinterest:

It is a painting of the skyline of the city I was born in: Tulsa, OK.  I was ready to purchase this painting from the Etsy seller but by the time I got around to it the Etsy seller no longer existed.  I was bummed but then I decided to take matters into my own hands and make my own.

I started by buying a large piece of watercolor paper from a local art store.  Because the piece was $10 I decided that I would do a test painting on a standard letter size of watercolor paper to practice before I painted the real thing.  I wanted to make sure that the technique would work and I also wanted to experiment with colors to make sure I got the right combination.

So here is how I did it.  I started by drawing the skyline and then scanned it in so I could trace it in my Silhouette software.

To make the lines nice and straight I edited the points until I got it to look exactly like I wanted it.  It took some time but it was worth it to get a crisp finished product.

I then enlarged the image and separated into 3 different pieces so that it would be big enough for my large piece of watercolor paper.

I cut the skyline out on contact paper using the settings from this post.

It took a little bit of time to make sure that I got the pieces lined up right on the paper but the contact paper is forgiving since it can be removed and repositioned.

Then it was time for the paint.  I chose bright colors since there is a lot of negative white space in the painting.

Then I removed the contact paper and ended up with these nice crisp lines.

I took the painting to Michaels and had it custom framed.  I chose a white double mat and a white framed because I wanted the skyline to pop and I really like the white on white look.  It is really hard to get a good photo of this with my bad living room lighting.  It looks so much more awesome in person.

It is nice to have something on the wall in the living room finally besides the mirror that we have over the piano.  Check back this weekend or next week for a post on stenciled storage boxes for the media console.