Painting With a Purpose

Yesterday, as a part of a fundraiser for a women's organization I belong to, a bunch of us went to Painting With a Twist to take a class. As far as I can tell, this is a relatively new idea, but studios have been popping up all over the place. (My mom has been to one, and told me I needed to go!) With Painting With a Twist, your group selects an image in advance, and then you attend this class where an instructor shows you how to re-create the picture step by step! Everyone's artwork turns out a little different, and you get to take it home after the class. Oh, and you can drink while painting. :)

I have never been a great painter, but I can follow instructions?

Here's the original picture we were supposed to be re-creating.

E-mailed to me by the group; I think it's a screenshot from PWAT's website.

I loved all the pink in it, so I was pumped. I considered using a different quote, but I couldn't think of a better one.

There was a big room with tons of easels and blank canvases, and everyone got this paper plate full of bright-colored paint — so bright, in fact, I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to produce the colors in the picture! — and a smock so we wouldn't get any acrylics on our clothes. (I'm glad I remembered to take my rings off before class, because I got paint all over my hands anyway.)

When the class first started, the girls at our table were kind of stressed out; the instructor was moving pretty fast — and I'm a perfectionist — but when we asked her to slow down she explained that you had to take a bunch of steps to make the background before the paint dried, which made sense. Once our backgrounds were done, she slowed down considerably, and then it was way more fun.

To get the backgrounds to dry, we blasted the canvases with hair dryers! And they blasted some awesome dance music. Oh, and did I mention there was wine?

How my background turned out!

I learned some new things about painting with acrylics! I had never known you could produce this watercolor effect just by "painting" water over your regular paint while it's still wet.

And here's my finished product!

So it doesn't look that much like the original. There is significantly less pink in it (sad face), but I am still pretty happy with how it turned out. I wound up moving the girl's left arm from the original placement because I accidentally put her hair in the way.

We used the blow dryers again so they wouldn't be wet when we brought them home, and the class was over!

Have you ever taken an art class?