Dec 22, 2015

Paint Nite

12/22/2015 — cori

So. Much. Fun! I wracked my brain this year for a creative, fun, unexpected gift for Chuck's birthday (since he always outdoes me in this department) and this is the best I could come up with. And he liked it! He was more of a Monet and I was summoning Van Gogh.

This was held at a local restaurant we'd never been to before. So we arrived early to eat some of the best Italian food ever! With our tummy's happy, we walked over to their banquet room and enjoyed a night of trying not to be anal about our artwork. This was a little more of a challenge for Chuck than it was for me. This reminded me of college and an awesome art class I took. Chuck...not so much. He's used to precision. He's a details guy. Let's just say there was a lot of 'humphs' and 'heavy sighs' going on in the seat next to me. The programs he uses on the computer to make things look good are much more preferred than our own wobbly, mere human hands.


We practiced getting our game face on. This level of creativity requires consternation, uh, I mean concentration. If only I had one of Chuck chewing on his bottom lip...the entire evening.



This is the piece of art we would be plagiarizing as our own after our two hours of agony pretending to be artists. This particular piece is the example we went by. The host of our Paint Nite also painted another of this exact same one step by step in front of us so we knew what to do. She practically held our hands. It wasn't paint by number, but it was close. At the beginning she said, "You have complete freedom. Enjoy."  That's when I lost Chuck.  He said that was too much for him. He wanted more restraints. He wanted a ruler. He yearned for Sketch (his program of choice for drawing and creating). But then he remembered that we were on a date and this was supposed to be fun and not perfect and so he threw caution to the wind and had fun anyways.


These were our finished products. I had a blast. Did I mess up? Yes. Do I care? No. There's no one right way to do anything in my book. The mess ups make this mine and that's what I value. Chuck on the the other hand does care a wee tiny bit more about the mess ups. He just about came undone with his bridge. I thought he would throw his canvas to the floor and start stomping on it. What I love about Chuck's is that it is so true to his design style: it has clean lines, minimalist and lots of white space. I especially like the color of his leaves. 

Art is ultimately an expression of who we are. It is to be appreciated and enjoyed, not picked apart and examined. Art is for pleasure and beauty. Both of which we enjoy in abundance.


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