See the Art in Me

I've been a bad blogger this week. Sorry! I promise to be better. My computer was in the hospital due to heat exhaustion. But fear not, she's back and hopefully good as new. Just an FYI for anyone with a laptop out there that gets pretty hot: there are things called chill pads that help prevent overheating. Who knew??

On to more exciting things. Last Sunday, three of my high school friends (how weird is it that four of us all ended up here? Even weirder: I went to elementary school with two of them) and I decided to put our artistic skills to use and do a little painting. We headed over to Uncork'd and we were greeted with wine, desserts, and a station for everyone in the class that looked like this:

We found out we would be painting a still life that featured a large vase and two pieces of fruit. We were all enthusiastic.  We've all painted before and are pretty creatively minded.  I tried to take pictures of the paintings in progress but I'm not going to embarrass myself or anyone else by posting those.  My white canvas slowly but surely ended up becoming this:

My thoughts?  The apple in front is too squatty; the highlighting on the vase is horribly off color, and the background is just... bad.  I was NOT a fan a the end of the class.  Actually, none of us were fans of our own work.  But we had fun creating our "masterpieces", and that's really the main point of why we got together.  I will say, though, that after not looking at it for 3 days, I pulled it out last night and it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it being.  And if it's in a room with dim lighting, it looks even better.  That said, I'm not so sure this one's going on a wall anywhere in our house.  The other girls' paintings were fine, but I know we are all capable of producing better work.  The key is having more time (two hours does not a premier work of art make, at least for me... and KW, Mrs. FBI, and MA) and understanding the type of media you're working with.  We were using acrylics, which I've used in other paintings I've done (if you come to our house, the painting in the bathroom is the last one I did), and they dry incredibly quickly.  Good for being able to take the painting home the same day, bad for blending while trying to blindly follow step-by-step instruction and having to wait between steps.  But it was a good time!  The staff was AWESOME and so kind and encouraging.   

In other news, I think it's time for a giveaway.  Winner gets a painting of a vase and two pieces of fruit.