Saturday, September 06, 2014

Women, Wine, and Watercolors

Last week the Elk Rapids Women group started their 2014-15 season, celebrating 70 years of encouraging and supporting women in the community. This season they've decided to focus on hosting events that give women a chance to have a fun night out. Realizing that we are, in fact, women, Aunt Linda and I decided to join them.


The September meeting was a Paint and Pour - a night of wine and watercolors. None of us had any watercolor painting experience (no, I don't consider my middle school watercolor Super Saturday class as "experience"), but we were willing to try.


My friend Steph joined us, and she and Linda bonded over their appreciation for white wine. Everyone chatted and snacked for a while before getting down to business. Then it was all work.


We started with sample strokes (those little white squares with lines on them), then set out to paint flowers (it was supposed to be a rose...mine is a little more mum-like). Linda got right to work, painting drier, dark lines, then bleeding out the colors with some water.


Okay, it wasn't all work. We had to let our flowers dry for a bit, so we refilled our snack plates. (Notice all of the cups on the table - surprisingly only one person accidentally rinsed out her brush in her drink.)


With the flower done and the stem added, Linda went rogue and added a tulip to her paper. 


Done! As you can tell, she was really proud of her picture, and I was really proud of her. I wasn't sure if she would get frustrated or enjoy herself; I think being with a bunch of other women who didn't know what they were doing helped her feel comfortable trying something new. I'm sure it didn't hurt either that some of the ladies took advantage of the wine portion of the night, so Linda's flower looked like a Monet compared to their final projects. Definitely a good time. We're already planning on and looking forward to attending more ERW events this season.