Art from a hotel room

Instead of spending this week in our little apartment in Ann Arbor, the kids and I made the drive to Manteno, Illinois to be with my husband.  That's where he's working for the time being.  The upside to this little trip is that we get to see Daddy everyday (as opposed to Thursday night to Monday morning), but the downside is having to hang out in a hotel room all week.  With four little kids.  With no car. 

Yeah.  Pretty boring.

The kids entertain themselves with TV and Xbox games (I know, I know, a lot of brain rotting is going on), coloring and drawing, doing pages in some workbooks I bought them and annoying each other, while I get to, um, ...uh .... what do I get to do?  Referee, check Facebook a dozen times a day,  read blogs, change diapers, pin to my Pinterest boards, nap.  Yep.  All of those things.  But I need stimulation!  I need a creative outlet!  I need to CREATE! 

Okay, maybe that's a tad dramatic.  But when my mister suggested that we go to the local Hobby Lobby to find something for me to do, I was all over it. 

Here's what I picked out.

A pad of watercolor paper, a set of watercolor paints and inexpensive brushes.

And here's what I did with them.

 
I am not an artistic painter.  I've painted before, I took a painting class or two in college (I was an art major after all) and I even took a watercolor class but dropped it before I got very far.  I've just never really felt comfortable with it. 

That said, I had a surprisingly good time with my watercolors.  Granted, my subject matter was simple.  How much simpler could you get?  But since I didn't really know what I was doing, I wanted to start off easy.  This let me truly enjoy just playing with the paints. 

I thought I'd get frustrated when my paintings didn't turn out very well, but instead I just let my mistakes happen and tried to learn from them.  The mistakes made me more excited to try again. 

It's been a really long time (too long) since I've sat down and done something artistic, just because I felt like it.  And despite the unremarkable results, I'm so very glad I did.