Old Dogs and New Tricks

I have a bucket list. I think most people have one, to one extent or another. If you’ve never heard of a bucket list, it’s a compilation of things you want to do and/or see before you “kick the bucket”. (Totally not morbid at all to make a list of things that you want to do before you die!) Last weekend I actually got to check off one of those items. It probably wasn’t even big enough to be bucket list worthy, but that’s ok. (I love crossing things off lists!)

It was a paint and sip, okay? There, I said it.

Have you heard about this trend? It might be “so yesterday” since I tend to lag a few years behind when it comes to what’s hip and cool. (See? Like “hip” and “cool” really isn’t that, well, hip and cool anymore.) Paint and sip is where you go pay a chunk of money to have someone teach you how to paint a passable painting. (If you’re lucky.) To spice things up, they offer alcoholic beverages to you while you are attempting to channel your inner Picasso. You know, because alcohol makes all skills better, right?

Let me preface the detailing of this event by saying that I enjoyed myself. I can’t paint for shit, but it was still an enjoyable evening. Plus, I would totally do it again, even if my painting looks like a middle school art project.

So back to the paint and sip. It was done as a girl’s night out slash birthday celebration and boy did I need some girl time! One of my online classes is kicking my butt, the youngest is resisting potty training harder than a super virus resists antibiotics, and the lottery still hasn’t taken me away from my daily work drudgery. (Not for lack of trying though!) So we gathered at a nearby establishment that was called Paint and Sip (original, right?) and sat in front of our blank easels and paper plates full of paint. On the walls are all the different paintings that they have done. This is probably to drum up excitement at what your painting can turn out to be, you know, before you muck it up with your total lack of artistic ability.

The painting was supposed to be a sunset and a lake and a loon. (Which looked a lot like a damn duck to me, but what do I know? I'm not the bird whisperer.)

Simple, right? (Well, other than the damn loon which, I will have you know, I decided was not going in there from the get go. I know my limits.) A little water, a little sky, some blackish-green blobby mountains and a squiggly sunset. Hey, I can do this! Maybe. No, I CAN do this!

I can NOT do this, as it turns out.

My artistic ability is limited to the written word and maybe my penchant for baking. My artistic talents do not lie in painting pictures. Walls yes, something suitable to hang on those walls, not so much. But I DID, however, find out why it’s a paint and SIP as I sat there and surveyed my surroundings in the "I'm not painting the damn duck" time. Liquid fortitude. Alcohol induced courage. Or maybe it’s so that you think you’re better artist than you really are. (Or so you don’t give a crap that you aren’t? Either way.) Long evening short, at the end of three hours you have something that you believe is pretty good for a novice, and maybe even a warm, fuzzy feeling. (Although that could be from the alcohol, depending on how many “sips” you took.) All the rest of the class has similar attempts so you feel pretty good about your own offerings. And if you can find someone with even less skill than you, you can inwardly make yourself feel better because you're at least better at painting than one person.

Unless there was, say, someone with actual artistic ability in your group. Like, maybe, an art teacher.

Yeah, if you want to feel inadequate as a burgeoning artist, have someone with real talent painting the same picture as you. Which, as it turns out, looked NOTHING like the picture we were attempting to paint and yet was 1,000 times more amazing. Sigh.

Oh well, I already knew that I wasn’t destined to wield a paintbrush like a weapon. A pen maybe. And I’ve definitely honed my razor sharp word skills. But next time I paint and sip, I’m going to pick an easier painting. Like maybe some stick figures and a smiling sun.