I have seen plenty of photos and advertisements of people attending Wine and Canvas events, but have never actually attended one myself …… until recently. One of my coworker’s was turning 21 and we decided to celebrate this at a Wine and Canvas event. Three of my coworkers had already had the experience and regaled me with stories of the fun and laughter to ensue. I was super excited at the prospect, especially as I love to paint, but still a little nervous about painting in front of others. We were given three colors to paint the whole picture, blue, black and white, and the instructor gave us step by step instructions, theoretically teaching us how to paint. The wine is self-serve, you get a glass at the beginning and then they brought out bottles. We started with red wine and I kept thinking this is going to look so bad, so so bad. But we persevered and things improved and I even learned some new techniques that will help with my paintings. After we finish the ocean, we start the sky. For some reason I found this part difficult, I just couldn’t seem to get the shades that I wanted. The instructor suggested I add more water and being the diligent student I am, I did. What he didn’t say was how much water……….just an FYI here – if you add to much it runs down your painting and ruins it. After recovering from the running water incident it was time to add clouds. My first cloud was absolutely horrific and I was ready to walk away and give up. I did walk away, had a lovely glass of wine, which seemed to help tone down the perfectionist in me, and then I continued to paint. The wine is an excellent idea, it helps people relax and have fun and discovered the therapeutic part of painting while ignoring (sort of) their imperfections as an artist. We added the moon and finished the highlights in the clouds, and now we were ready for the fun part - the palm trees. Everyone’s palm trees look different which makes all the paintings unique, but I think, and I am sure most will agree with me, this was the hardest part of the whole painting. A lot more wine was consumed during the painting of the palm trees . The instructor continued to go around the room, helping people to fix little things here and there, and telling them to add other stuff if they wanted to. Actually the instructor and his assistant did this the whole evening, helping people understand how to do things, explaining different techniques, but when he came to me he would say ‘Oh wow that’s amazing… so I can see you have painted before. You have this certain style to you’. I told him how I love to paint, and paint often, and he asked me if I sell my work in a gallery. I explained that I am just a college student having fun and I have no idea how to get into a gallery. He told me to look into it, to try and find somewhere that would display my work, but I’m not sure. It seems a little nerve-racking, putting your paintings on display for others to see and criticize. I paint for me, I paint what I like and how I feel, not sure how I would handle people not liking my work. All in all it was a fun evening and I am so glad I went. If you haven’t tried it, I really recommend going, you will not regret it.
4 Comments
|
Victoria VerleysenI love traveling the world Archives
October 2016
Categories |