Paint Nite: A Fun Night Out

Last night I left A at home with N while I had a night out with my Mother-in-Law and Sisters-in-Law.

I had never heard of Paint Nite before so I found the concept really cool and wanted to share my experience. Paint Nite is a program that has events at various bars. They provide an instructor, an easel, canvas, apron, paintbrushes and paints. The idea is that all you have to do is show up and have fun. No skill required.

I am not skilled at drawing at all! So I was hesitant to try this as I dislike trying and failing so badly to create things that should be art. When I create them, they are more disaster. But my sister-in-law, AF, had done it a couple of times and enjoyed so she invited us all to join her for a fun night out. So my Mother-in-law, DA, who loves painting and therefore loved this idea, my sisters-in-law, DE and SG, who are not so craftsy but were also game, and I all went.

AF is the one who set it up so she chose this painting because the event location was fairly close, the picture was cute and the day and time worked for all of us. As we had several of us with differing schedules, the timing was the most complicated part.

Paint Nite Event Info

We arrived at Mo’s Seafood where the event was set up in the back. We couldn’t eat anything but they brought us water. We settled in a little early as we wanted to sit together and waited…. and waited…. finally around 10 minutes after the event was supposed to start, the instructor said that we were still waiting for a few more people. So she had us wait 15 more minutes in hopes that they would arrive. We finally started half an hour late. This was not an auspicious beginning. The events last around 2 hours long and we all had families to get home to, and work the next day.

Once we started, we quickly became engrossed. It was not the easiest think to paint by any means. In fact, the instructor was quite surprised that it had been listed as easy. She said that usually easy ones have fewer steps and need less precision. The brushes that we had were not really equipped for this type of painting we really could have used another one that was much smaller. But we did the best we could. A few of the details like the eyelashes on the female owl and the feet on both owls were left out completely. I think the instructor realized there was no way to add those with our brushes.

Usually, these paintings come out looking almost identical but ours were a lot more varied. Even the instructor who said that she painted the sample earlier the same day had a final result that was quite different from the sample.

But in the end, while it was hard and much more involved than we had expected, it was a lot of fun! I won’t say that it made me an artist or anything like that, but my picture came out pretty good! Judge for yourself, I am putting up all of them below, let me know what you think.

This is the sample

Owl Alway's Love You Painting