Last Friday night a friend of mine celebrated her birthday in a very fun way: by inviting us to join her at the local Painting with a Twist studio for food, wine, and fun with paints and brushes.
What were we painting?
The fun thing about Painting with a Twist is that anyone can do it. An instructor leads you through the composition of the night, step-by-step, and everything–paints, canvas, brushes, easel, the works!–is included in your class fee. Our picture was a 2-hour class–yes, we all did this in just 2 hours-and our instructor was just the cutest thing and worked very well with our, uh, spirited group! They also let (nay, encourage!) you to bring in food and drinks to make the atmosphere that much more relaxed.
I took some photos as the painting developed, just so you could see the process
Our cute-as-a-button instructor, Laura
Step 1: Yellow surrounded by darker yellow–Laura called these two French’s and Dijon
I named this the ketchup & mustard vortex–after this we all made use of the hairdryers to dry the background enough to continue. And get more wine.
Step 3: Adding in the dark–respect the black paint!–shadows in three of the corners.
Step 4: Adding the hill in the remailing corner
Step 5 and then some–things moved rather quickly once we started adding the tree, the orbs, the details on the tree, the centers of the orbs, our leaves and a bird. I made my bird into a wonky little peacock just because.
It was a great 2 hours (okay, we ran a smidgen long due to excessive celebration, lol) and while I didn’t exactly learn anything new or earth-shattering, many of the girls got a significant confidence boost in regards to their own creativity. Many are planning to go back for another class (each store posts a schedule of the available nights and what painting will be taught, you just sign up for the one(s) you’re interested in–and there are locations all over the country!) and I did entertain the fleeting thought of seeing if they had any instructor openings. Emphasis on fleeting, though–I could do it, but I really don’t have time. Still, it would be so much fun, like when I taught cake decorating but with WAY fewer calories.
Next week I’ll be back with a couple more creative gift-wrap solutions, and then maybe we’ll eventually get back to woodworking 😉
Have you done anything fun and creative this week?
~Scraps