Mother/Daughters Date

     Before Sarah returned back to CU, the girls and I had a night out together. We headed to Uptown Art for an evening of painting.  At Uptown Art, there is a calendar of events with each evening having a different painting that you can (hopefully) recreate. You are also allowed, and it seemed encouraged  to bring your own beverage to sip on while painting.The classes are usually 2-3 hours long. It was dominated with lots of women, but there were a few kind boyfriends and husbands who obliged in joining their partner.

After checking in we got on our aprons and assembled our pallet of colors.

From beginning to end the class is structured very well. We used acrylic paints and were told how many pumps to place on our pallets. 

Lindsay and Courtney were ready to paint! You can see on the gallery wall some examples of the different pieces they offer as options.

Sarah and I sat in front of Courtney and Lindsay.

Lindsay and Courtney getting started.

Courtney blending two colors to get the perfect shade.

Sarah working on her painting.

Lindsay leaning back for perspective.

Courtney making sure the edges were painted as well. 

Lindsay looking at the instructor for what to do next. 

You can also see how we mixed our paints directly on the paper covered table.

Step by step of my painting

It was quite amazing how all of these little steps came together for a decent outcome. First step- two blue dividing lines. The instructors gave us clues like "three fingers from the bottom" make your first blue line. Painting for dummies basically ;)

After blending some blue, black and a bit of white, we filled in the spaces. I really liked the streaks of black that would show up and create some shading.

Filled the middle section with black.

Then we made our Nashville skyline. The main building we were instructed to include was what we call the "Batman" building. It's probably the most iconic building from the downtown skyline. I wasn't happy with my Batman building- too much like cat ears(oh well!).

Then we started adding in the well know swirls in the sky from Starry Night. This was challenging to make it look light and flowing.

I missed a few steps, but you can see we added the moon, some stars, and more "swirls" in different shades of blue.

Then we filled in our skyline with black.

We then focused on the water area and did some cool wave like movements and little flares of blue along the  shore.

The final part was some lights along the shore and reflecting in the water. Another challenging part to do well. After that, I played around a bit creatively in my water area and then was pleased as could be for our class time with my painting.

Starry Night over Nashville

I love how each of our paintings were of course similar, yet different in the final outcome. We all had a wonderful time and we are looking at the calendar for when we can make our next painting together.