Wine and Design

One of the newest crazes, and I'm sure I'm months behind on this, is a wine and painting class. My friend SueG has wanted to go for quite some time, but it wasn't until Madison expressed an interest that we actually signed up. The premise is easy. Bring some snacks and some wine (or beer) and paint. Each night there is a specified painting, and while our evening's selection wasn't my favorite, the timing was right and off we went. She brought her two children and I brought Madison, and we ended up being the only ones in the class that night. Obviously the selection wasn't anyone else's favorite either.

The studio was set up for us with our easels, our paints, and our canvas already drawn out for us. I'm not sure if that is typical or that she wanted to move things along, but I didn't argue. I am certainly not an artist and would probably list that as one of my top five least talents so I was quite happy to sit down with my wine to fill in the blanks. We started first by examining some other people's work, concentrating as she told us, on depth, contrast, and texture. She had us stand close and then far away to study these paintings, and mostly I gulped my wine and consumed my chips and salsa and nodded when I felt it appropriate.

At last we sat before our soon to be masterpieces.The teacher stood on a platform above us with her supplies and talked us through the painting. We painted the beach portion of our painting first. She told us to mix the brown, the white, and the yellow and then added, "if you chose", but by then I had followed the directions like a good little student, and I didn't like the color of my sand. I learned that I had to listen to her with a grain of salt and weed out the portions I didn't necessarily agree with as she talked.

It was fun. We were probably too serious in this our first experience. She kept trying to get us to talk, but except for a story I told at the beginning, we were very focused on our task. She had music playing in the background, and I would occasionally burst out to sing along which excited her, but we were apt little painters. Other than almost dipping my paintbrush in my glass of wine to clean it, I thought I did well. I didn't, however, feel that my painting was going to sell any time soon. It turned out a bit better than I had hoped, but after seeing other creations around the room and on Facebook I realized I came in with higher expectations. I think it would definitely be more fun with a bigger group of drinkers.

A few days later while at my volunteer job our administrator was remarking on how she needed art work to hang in her office. I smiled and told her I had just the thing. I'm going to hang it in her office tomorrow while she is at a doctor's appointment. Oh, and I'm donating it.