April 2012 Activity -- Sippin' and Paintin' (and Counterfeitin')

Sure, the other Dilettantes had better paintings.
But I did mine left-handed.

Tuesday, April 10, 20127:00-9:00pm
LivingSocial HQ
918 F Street, NW
Washington, DC
$29/person included canvas, paint, brushes,
instruction and three wine tickets

This class made us feel like kids again. Well, except for the wine. That made us feel like kids when creepy uncle Joey visited and gave us cups of "don't tell mommy" juice.

Although this was not our first Living Social activity, it was our first time at the Living Social HQ, which is a very cool building. Dilettante Amanda had plenty of time to check it out and reserve some seats because Dilettantes Kathleen and Amy were running red lights late getting there.

We got situated at our easels, put on our aprons and began receiving instruction from local artist Emma Steinkraus, who gave us tips on mimicking the brush strokes, colors and movement of Van Gogh's "Starry Night". (We each had a color printout of the painting taped to our easels for reference.)  So, after a moment of silence for fellow artistic genius Thomas Kinkade who passed this week, we got right to work channeling Vincent.

(And Dilettantes Amy and Kathleen may have tried to convince Dilettante Amanda that she should fling herself into traffic to make her piece worth more. And that she should lop off her ear -- you know, to really walk in the artist's footsteps up Mt. Crackers.) (Totally stolen phrasing.) Dilettante Kathleen also focused on making the others crazy by singing Don McLean's "Starry, Starry Night" on a continuous loop.

There were about 25 other people in the class whose talents ranged from worse than us (ha! ha! I really had you going there for a minute, didn't I?) like Captain Retentive, who got to class early and sketched out a framework for the entire painting before the rest of the class even got there -- to awesome, like the woman who replaced the dark tree in the painting with the Seattle space needle, and another person whose inspiration took her somewhere very orange.

The two hours went by quickly, even though Dilettante Kathleen stood for the entire class in her sittin' shoes. (Had to get the "tortured" part of "Tortured Artist" in there.) Afterward, we met Dilettante Amy's lil sis from her sorority days at Pi (appropriately) right next door for some decent  food and beer and some oddly schizophrenic service.

Dilettantes with their (mostly finished) masterpieces.
You Gogh, Girls! (I'm so sorry....)