Girls Night - Heart to Art at Cafe Pranzo

This evening my friend, Mrs. Jill, and I spent the evening painting.  I had purchased a Groupon for two to Heart to Art.  You can go to Heart to Art and choose a picture you would like to paint.  After you choose your painting, you find out what restaurant where you will spend the evening.  We choose "Make Lemonade" at Cafe Pranza. 

When we arrived, Jennifer, the owner of Heart to Art, and Danielle, the instructor were still setting up.  They set up our canvases, paints, brushes, and aprons.  There were about nine women present. 

Danielle starts by telling us how she will do each step.  She has a finished painting of what we are going to paint, a bowl of lemons sitting on a table.  She also has a blank canvas and a dry erase board. For each step, she will show us what to do on the dry erase board.  After that, she paints it on her canvas as we follow along.  

Danielle has us start by painting a red line just below the half way mark of our canvas.  Each step she tells us which brush to use, how wet to have our brush and which paint/paints to use. 

We paint the bottom portion of our canvases reddish.  This will be our tablecloth.  Everyone's red is a little different, depending on how much white they mixed with their red.  

Next we painted our background.  Again everyone's background are different shades of green.  As we are painting, a lot of questions start arising.  "Am I doing this right?"  "Why does mine have lines."  "What blend of colors did you do?" 

Danielle shows us each step.  She is very patient and encouraging.  As we all start to doubt ourselves a bit, she encourages us to not worry about the small things.  It will all work out in the end.  She tells us to blend a little here or add a little here.  Never making us feel like we are horrible job.  Even though it might seem repetitive that she draws what she is going to do on the dry erase board and then paints it on her canvases, it isn't.  It is very helpful.

Danielle has us add our gingham stripes to our tablecloth.  We then as small highlights to the white stripes. 

Oh yeah, somewhere between, we have small breaks to let our paint dry.  Jill and I order some brushutto and garlic bread.  Yummy!!!

Danielle offered to take our picture while we were adding our lemons.  This is where I had to concentrate a little more.  It required more detail and a steadier hand. 

After we painted our lemons, the rest was just adding shading, outlining and detail to our lemons and the bowl.  When we were finished we took a group picture.  Jennifer took our pictures to post on Facebook.  When she posts it, I will add it to this post.  

It was very cool to see everyone's painting.  We all had painting a picture of the same thing, but each picture was different.  Some bowls were large, some bowls were more round.  Some had more lemons, and some had less.  Mrs. Jill and I took a picture together.

I took a picture with Danielle and what our painting is supposed to look like. 

This was such a fun Girl's Night Out.  It was something different to do other than just go out to eat.  Anyone, and I mean anyone can do this.  If I can do it, anyone can.  

Jennifer had Heart to Art loyalty cards.  Paint with them five times, get the sixth time free.  Mrs. Jill and I enjoyed it so much we purchased a gift certificate to do it again.  

Here's my finished painting.