The first time I described Brush, Paint & Sip to someone, they didn’t think I was serious. I repeated myself: “You drink wine and then paint something.” They laughed, still thinking I was joking.
Then I realized my error. I was making Brush, Paint & Sip sound akin to the schoolyard game in which you spin around a baseball bat for 30 seconds and then try to run in a straight line. But it’s not like that. You don’t get inebriated and then try to paint inside the lines. Rather, you spend 30 minutes with friends tasting a variety of wines, then you filter into a room in which easels and paint supplies are already set up, and follow the instructions of your host as you reproduce a simple painting.
It’s simple yet, judging by the 30 or so paint & sippers that packed DeBarge Winery last Saturday, a lot of fun.
The evening began at six o’clock, with people arriving at DeBarge Winery, located off East Main Street on Rossville Avenue, and spending a few minutes at the tasting bar. As I wanted to take photos, I’d brought my wife to paint. Some of the folks were dressed slightly elegantly, as it was an evening out, while most were dressed casually, as they were going to be wielding goopy brushes.
The wine tasting set the tone for the evening. People relaxed, chatted, and laughed, and a few purchased bottles to carry into the room where they would be painting. It’s called “Paint & Sip,” I thought to myself, not “Sip & Then Paint.”
As people made their way into the painting room, snacks came out of plastic grocery bags: Cheeses, sausages, crackers, and other munchables were placed next to tabletop easels, paintbrushes, pallets and other supplies needed for the task at hand. Brush & Paint provides the tools; you bring the snacks.
At the far end of the room rested the painting everyone would be reproducing: a simple nature scene titled “Spring is Spring.” Its bright, yellow daffodils set against a pastoral backdrop was well-timed, as the thoughts of many people are already turning to warmer weather.
I spent a few minutes taking an inventory of the room. At one table sat a group of six buoyant ladies, who were sharing a couple of newly purchased bottles. I asked if they were friends. “We’re members of a book club, only we don’t read books, we just get drunk,” one said, laughing. The others lifted their glasses and hooted. Clearly, mission accomplished.
I moved on, learning that a teacher was there with her two daughters, finding a couple of men whose girlfriends had coaxed them into coming, talking with a group of women who were celebrating a birthday, and chatting with two friends, one of whom was an artist, the other of whom was not. “Unless you count paint by numbers,” the non-artist friend joked.
Paint & Sip has one rule, the host said as he took his place beside a blank easel, in view of everyone in the room: “You can say whatever you want about someone else’s painting, but you can’t say anything bad about yours.” In other words, if the first time you pick up a painter’s brush is at Brush & Sip, then you’ll fit right in. The evening isn’t about painting a masterpiece, but about relaxing and having fun.
The host started out easy, providing instructions on which of four brushes to select for the first application of paint, explaining how to “scritch” the brush (“This is a very technical term,” he joked as he “scritched” a large brush against a paper towel), and then demonstrating how to apply a band of blue at the top of the easel. Almost in unison, 30 brushes with bright blue tips were raised and began being swiped back and forth.
The instructions grew slightly more complicated as the evening passed - the key word being “slightly.” After everyone had painted the sky, the host explained how to mix green and orange to make brown, then everyone painted a strip of brown across the middle of the canvas to represent a distant mountain. Two hours later, grass, twisting tree branches with red leaves, deep green stalks and bright, yellow petals accented with orange filled each canvas.
Some of the paintings impressed me. A few of the artists had gone in their own direction, including one of the daughters of the teacher. Her brushwork was slightly impressionistic, and instead of a straight band of brown across the middle, she had blended strokes of yellow, orange and red bursting upward, as though they formed fire from the heart of the Earth, and a cluster of blue flowers shooting out of the ground like a fountain. “She’s never been one to paint inside the lines,” her mother, an elementary school teacher, said.
Other paintings were more amateurish, but that was OK, because each one brandished the unique stamp of the artist. I was impressed with my wife’s petals, which gracefully replicated the tear-drop shape of the real thing. She looked pleased. “I didn’t know I was so talented,” she tapped into her phone as she posted a cell phone snapshot of her creation on Facebook. She beamed as the “Likes” started to add up.
Throughout the evening, the wine, laughter and conversation had flowed; pleasant, upbeat music had played in the background, leading some of the ladies to dance as they painted; and the host kept things moving along at a nice clip.
A Chattanooga original, Brush, Paint & Sip meets at a variety of venues, hosts non-alcoholic family events, and even does private parties. Visit their website at www.brushpaintandsip.com to see where they’ll be and which painting they’ll be featuring. In addition to “Spring is Sprung”, you might end up reproducing “Umbrella Girl,” “Red Barn,” “Rainy Night Walk” or another masterwork, a brush in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.