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Pick up your favorite bottle of wine. Catch up on some good ol Bob Ross. Channel in your artistic side because it’s Painting With a Twist day!
Who knows how this whole, going to a workshop, getting drunk with your friends and painting a picture on a canvas became a thing, but here we are, and the trendsetter that I obviooously am had to go check it out for myself. My cousin and I went to the actual Painting With a Twist shop over in Liverpool, but some local bars and restaurants are now hosting similar programs themselves, and Beak n’ Skiff just put on a “Paint and Sip” night this past Friday. Definitely plenty of options to choose from if you’re looking to get drunk and artsy. Plus there’s always a ton of cool classes to choose from, ranging anywhere from nature scenes to abstract designs to of course, pictures involving wine.
As encouraged, we arrived at the studio about 15 minutes early where we checked in and were shown to our seats. Our class started at 3 p.m. and was pretty packed- more so than I would have expected for a Sunday afternoon! We tied on our smocks, poured our first glass of wine and our instructor introduced us to Big Papa, Big Mama and Tiny Richard (our paintbrushes).
Sitting in front of my blank canvas, I will admit, I panicked just a little bit. I love crafting. I love designing. I love creating something out of nothing. But, somehow I’m supposed to turn this into something that resembles two mason jars and hydrangeas? Yeah, right. But I put my fears aside, took a big sip of wine and in no time at all we were off .
-ALSO, just a tip. PWAT suggests that you bring your own wine and snacks for the class, but never makes mention of wine glasses. These are obviously a must (unless of course you’re planning on drinking straight out of the bottle, in that case, you do you), so don’t forget to bring one along with you! We brought plastic to-go wine glasses which ended up being a smart choice as there was in fact a broken glass about halfway through the class (it turns out drinking wine and painting in close quarters with little elbow room isn’t probably the best idea.)
For the next two hours our instructor walked us through the painting from his position at the front of the room, walking around to help as needed. There were also two other assistants floating around who would replace your paper towels and paint whenever you needed a replacement, and the staff as a whole was very friendly!
We started simple- blue background mixed in with some whites- and slowly worked our way up to the more difficult layers, blowdrying our canvas as we moved on. We created an outline for our mason jars, added some flowers, went back to the mason jars and put the finishing touches on the flowers. If you were brave enough, you could add some stenciling to the outside of the mason jars as well! Check out the progression of my canvas below: #gallery-1396-16 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1396-16 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1396-16 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1396-16 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
As the afternoon wound down and the wine bottle ran dry, we were getting closer and closer to our final product and finding it harder and harder to keep a steady hand. Perfect timing since this is when most of the detailing came into play, amirite? But, we were deep in concentration at this point and nothing could hold us back (as pictured):
Finish the night off with a group photo off on center stage to show off our hard work and we were done! The class lasted a little over 2 hours and honestly flew by! It could have been the wine buzz, could have been the fear of messing up- who knows, but it was a ton of fun and I would completely do it again! For only $35 you get a fun day/night out with friends, personal instruction and a canvas to take home with you! I would also highly recommend it to anyone, even if you don’t consider yourself artistically inclined! It’s almost more fun to sit back and laugh at yourself and your inability to draw than it would be to take it seriously. We saw a few couples in the studio with us and a bunch of different friend groups- the perfect idea for date night or a birthday celebration!
