If you've never heard of PaintNite, or have but have never gone to one, you have to give it a try. They are a fun way to spend the afternoon or evening and try something you normally would never do - creating your very own works of painted art.
At first, the idea of joining a big group of people and be expected to whip up a Michelangelo in an hour or so seems a bit crazy, but having done 3 of them now I have to recommend this to anyone if you have the chance. You get to choose the class based on what painting level you want to try, we went for a beginner level tree painting to get started.
We all started with a blank 16" x 20" canvas, a cup of water, and a plate with blobs of primary color paints. Yes, we had to mix up the secondary colors like orange, green, and purple, but it was easy enough to do and the instructor came around to help anyone who had trouble getting started.
The first step, which seemed odd at first, was to wet the entire canvas down with water. Apparently this helps the base payers of paint spread out more evenly and blend easier. This was my first time painting like this, so I just went along with it and did what I was told to do.
Paint the Rainbow
We then turned the canvas on its side and began to paint in the background rainbow that would represent the colors of the sky during sunset. We did mix the secondary colors on our plates, but also had to carefully blend them together with the colors on each side as we went along.
It's at this point where you really start to notice the individuality of everyone's paintings. The thickness of the color bands and the amount of fading between the colors were very different which gave a unique personality to each painting being created. There is no right or wrong way, you just go with what you feel.
Do What Now?!
The next step was to add in the trees. This was a high anxiety moment since you are about to put solid black paint down on top of the awesome rainbow colors you just spent 30 minutes creating. It was funny, at this point the instructor who has done this class many times before, joked with us... "Don't think, just put some black on the brush, plop it on the canvas at the bottom and pull it up. Whatever happens will be beautiful in its own way". We all chuckled a bit and went for it.
After the first black line was painted, you think to yourself - that wasn't so bad. From this point on the lines flowed and we added in branched, more trees, and then white dots to represent fireflies or stars. The joke was, if your dot was on the rainbow, it can be a star... if you hit a tree, then that can be a firefly. My wife had a lot of "fireflies".
It was really cool to walk around and see everyone's interpretation of the intended challenge. The amazing thing was how good everyone's paintings came out. Considering 90% of us had no prior painting experience, we did darn good.
Have you even been to a PaintNite event?
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