Wine and Paint Parties

I had the best girls night last night.

Our wonderful friends Lucy and Rex are visiting from England at the moment in this glorious Texas winter weather (I'm being sarcastic - there's enough water on the ground to drown a whale). Their equally wonderful, if not more so, son Archie is here with them too. 

Last night Lucy and I decided to go on a date, so we booked ourselves into a Wine and Paint party.

The experience is exactly what it says on the tin - you paint and drink wine. Now this could be a dangerous combination. Picture paint and wine sloshing around, then chuck in some crab dip and crackers for good measure, and you've got yourself a fiasco. Or the next Turner prize. 

Lucy and I, however, were pretty tame and gentile with our wine and art evening, mainly because a) I was driving, and b) we were concentrating so much on our artwork that we forgot to sip. 

Wine and Paint Parties and other similar events (Painting with a Twist, Sip 'n' Doodle) are held in various places around the Dallas area. We ventured into Uptown to Max's Wine Dive (slogan, 'Fried chicken and champagne?...why the hell not?!'). It was a great environment, with about 20 budding painters/wine drinkers settled at easels. 

We created an impressionists view of the Dallas skyline, complete with Van Gogh inspired stars and reflections in the Trinity river. Our teacher guided us through the process smoothly, with the end result that we all had our own version of the scene (apart from one girl who decided that a forest would be much more fun to paint). 

The best part about it was seeing everyone's styles and personalities coming through in their paintings. We sent these 'who-painted-what' pictures to Austin and Rex part way through the process, and they both guessed correctly! 

Mine

Lucy's

At the end everyone had a little nose at the various attempts. The guy siting behind us had chosen his own very bright colour combinations and had created a masterpiece worthy of  his first grade self (his words, not mine). He grinned and told us that a lot of passion had gone into his creation, and we both agreed. He had definitely been using his paintbrushes with gusto.  

Here are our finished products alongside the original:

And here's a link to Wine and Paint Parties if you fancy a unique night out in Dallas: http://wineandpaintparties.com/ (Check out Groupon for some great deals)