Beacon Hill

I foresee this as one of many posts about Boston… Although I briefly mentioned my visit here, one small post is definitely not enough. In a nutshell, I fell head over heels in love with the city. Such elegance, amazing history, architecture, setting, food (I ate 2 lobsters in one go, mmm…), shopping, people… I could go on and on, so for the purposes of this post, I’ll talk about Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill is a neighbourhood just north of Boston Common and famous for many reasons: distinctive red brick Georgian architecture, history and notable residents, both past and present. Louisa May Alcott lived in number 10 Louisburg Square:

John Kerry also lives in Louisburg Square:

Wikipedia tells me that Uma Thurman, Carly Simon, Michael Crichton and Sylvia Plath are also among Beacon Hill’s notable residents. Who wouldn’t want to live in one of these houses?

One of the key sites within Beacon Hill is Acorn Street. Famous because of its cobblestone pavement, it is apparently one of the most photographed streets in America:

Naturally, I HAD to do a painting of one of these lovely houses. Instead of doing it in my usual watercolour, I recently discovered casein thanks to this amazing book by Stephen Quiller. It talks in depth about the various watermedia (watercolour, acrylic, gouache and casein) and the latter just fascinates me. After buying the colours mentioned in the book yesterday, as soon as I got home I began to test this wonder media and here’s the result: