Paint Nite

This past Christmas, my nieces gave my sister and I tickets to a Paint Nite -  where you go and do a painting in a couple of hours!  Do you have them where you live?  They are all the rage here lately - they are usually held in restaurants - and you order drinks and appetizers while you work if you want to,  they play kind of loud music encouraging a party atmosphere while you learn to paint the featured piece.  So we finally picked a night that was good for us all and where they were doing something we liked the look of.  

Here we are at a local Bertucci's Restaurant, Friday night.   It was really fun - and each of our paintings came out a little different but all worthy of hanging!

Here's the class - we are in the front right enjoying our glasses of wine!

The painting we did was called Icy Birch.  Here is Kerri, our instructor showing us how to paint the background. 

Niece Katie and my sister Marcia standing, me and niece Christie sitting

 We were given a canvas, an apron to wear, 3 different size paint brushes to use and a paper plate with white, dark blue and black paint squirted on it.   Here we were adding areas of dark blue, and then lighter blue. (lighting not too bright in our corner!)

Then we mixed a spot of black with white and added gray patches. (I almost covered all the blue - so I added some more back in later!)

Next was to draw in the black lines of the tree - and Kerri showed us how to paint knots around the area the branches met the trunk and we added 'snow frost' to the branches.

Marcia and Katie with their masterpieces!

Christie concentrating on her painting

There was a photographer there who ran the music and took photos all night -  here we are happy painters!

And here it is, temporarily, hanging above my computer -

so I can look at it and say - "wow"!

 It's not a perfect piece by any means, but to walk in with no prior painting experience to speak of, and to walk out in two hours with something that actually looks like a snow covered tree - was pretty amazing and a fun night out with family!