Trying my (not so steady) hand at painting

I recently spent an evening with some friends attending a Vino Van Gogh event.  Basically, they walk you through the techniques needed to paint a specific painting while you drink wine and chat with your girlfriends.  Sounds pretty awesome, right?  It was.  I anticipated being anxious about getting everything "right", but I ended up really loving the freedom of it all.  Don't like that color? Paint over it with another color and it changes.  Don't like the size of that stroke?  Do it again.  It was great.  And I went home with a pretty awful painting.  But it's still hanging on the wall of our back study.  It feels a little like a kid's crazy finger-painting that mom just can't help hanging on the fridge. Not because it's beautiful, but because it's significant nonetheless.  Except in this case I'm both the mom and the kid.  Here it is.

"Wildflowers" by me (with the help of some very nice Vino Van Gogh teachers)

But I enjoyed the experience so much that I decided to try it again.  But this time with something a little less "free-flowing" and a little more graphic.  I found this pin on Pinterest, chronicling the DIY process of creating a painting that I really loved.  Plus, it was done by one of my favorite home decorating blogs, Young House Love.  Seemed easy enough: draw a bunch of straight lines, divide the long segments into sections with 90* corners, and paint inside the lines with various soothing hues of blue and grey. And I just happened to have a big empty canvas hanging out in the basement.  Perfect. 

Except for the fact that you have to stay inside the lines.  Which in this case, is the whole point.  Crisp, straight graphic lines. But I persisted (for about 6 hours), shaky hand and all.  And it turned out okay. The borders aren't perfectly straight.  And the colors aren't exactly what I wanted.  But I'm good with it.  It's now hanging propped up on top of the radiator in our living room.  Here's some documentation of the process.  

Drawing very straight lines and points. 

The first color. 

Mixing colors. Might have been the best part. 

More colors. 

Done. Don't look too closely. 

Not perfect.  But good enough.