Painting & Wine

There’s a new “thing” out there in the cultural zeitgeist, at least here in SoCal, where ordinary people with little or no artistic training (or talent) get together to drink wine and paint a picture. It can be done as a date night sort of thing, or a group can rent out the whole place for a couple hours for a team building type of thing.

The Long-Suffering Wife did it a while back with a group from her place of employment – she thought it was fantastic. I had my opportunity last night as we had our office Christmas party at one of these places.

The Long-Suffering Wife was correct. It was a lot of fun. It also helped that I was at a Christmas party with people I really enjoy working with in a company that I really like. And the wine was pretty good.

Big strokes, gobs of paint. It’s a bit like follow the leader or painting by numbers. Small, simple steps, with instructors wandering around to help – everyone’s was recognizable as coming from the “master” image we were copying, but they were all quite individual.

We’re using acrylics. It’s interesting to see how many people worry about doing it “right.” There is no “right.” You’re with friends, you’re drinking wine, chill and play with it!

My biggest problem was technical – the most fine, narrow lines I wanted to do were like using one of those super fat markers. I’m sure I would get it with practice.

Dabbing, however, I excelled at. (This is your surprised face…)

I was sorely tempted from the beginning to deliberately go off the rails, using the wrong colors and/or painting something completely different than everyone else was. (Next time, for sure!)

This is the one finished by our instructor, which is what we were trying for (in theory).

This is mine. Not great, but not bad since it’s about thirty-six years since I last painted. That’s the advantage to going off the rails – if no one knows what it’s supposed to look like, no one can tell you how much you missed the mark.

Finally, the walls are lined with hundreds of other pictures that you can paint in different classes, including this one. I kept asking which one was Morrissey, but the only person who got the joke was one of the instructors.

Kids these days!