Last night was my good friend Nalee's birthday, so she decided to do something fun and unique: Paint Nite! What is Paint Nite? It's an event hosted by art teachers or professional artists to teach people how to paint a specific scenery. Usually they take place at a restaurant or bar. No, you don't need experience because the teacher will break it down to the most simple forms! It's all about bringing your friends and having a blast. Plus, there's alcohol involved (we didn't have any though since we all drove)
We went to Pete's Restaurant and Brewhouse in the Natomas area of Sacramento. We were taken in a small room with 25 seats available, with canvases, paints, brushes and aprons supplied for us.
The painting we were supposed to recreate: "Summer to Fall"
The Birthday girl and I
Me and my other friend Nerrizza
I've taken numerous drawing classes before, and I did take a painting class 2 years ago, but it's been such a long time so I was still nervous. But the teacher was so hilarious and calmed our nerves: she kept saying comments like,"if you're going to cry and have a meltdown, you need to leave the room!", "I don't recommend you leave your job tomorrow and move to Paris to sell your art!", "You can add elements to the painting, and you don't even have to paint the subject shown, you're not going to hurt my feelings", "you need the alcohol to calm your nerves and loosen up".
We were just given the basic colors: yellow, red, blue and white. With those 4 paints, you can mix them into whatever color and shade you want. We used acrylic paint because that is the easiest to start off with for beginners: easy to mix, dries fast, and you clean and paint with water (with oil paint, you have to use turpentine. And did I mention how SLOW it is?! Think of dewy foundation as oil paint and matte foundation as acrylic).
The teacher told us how she loved art growing up and took art classes in high school. However, in her 20's, she worked in a bank and stopped creating art all of a sudden. Then, her mother got diagnosed with breast cancer (and is a healthy survivor), which inspired her to get back into art. So she took classes at a local community college and absolutely loved it, and now she gets to teach "drunk adults" (in her words).
For the past few months, I kept saying that I want to start drawing and painting again but I never got around to it. I even bought some paints, brushes and canvases at Michael's! This class has given me that creativity mojo back. Even Nalee, who has never painted before, loved it towards the end and kept saying,"we should do this more often!"
My final painting
The girls' final masterpieces! Think we can be the next Monet? Oh yeah, and I accidentally brought the apron home with me.
I highly recommend going to a Paint Nite for a fun night with your friends, to try something new and get your creative juices flowing! Who knows, you might pick up a new hobby? If you're interested, please click on the website here, click the "Find Events" button, and you can choose the amount of miles radius near you. It is primarily located in the U.S., but Paint Nite events are also available in Canada, Argentina, South Africa and the UK. Hopefully it becomes more popular that it expands in many other countries! I recommend not buying the tickets through the website though because it's full price. For this event, it would've been $40, but I used Groupon and bought my ticket for $25.
And remember:
"If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."-Vincent Van Gogh
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