So my wife and I went to a wine and painting class this past Sunday night. It was part of a series of Date Night Adventures we received as a wedding gift.
It was fun.
Neither of us are really artists. Yes, we each dabbled in photography in college, and I had art as an elective in 6th grade, but painting isn’t my strong suit. I leave that to my talented youngest sister.
So on Sunday, we arrived at the class, set up our canvases, opened up our bottle of wine, and got busy taking iPhone photos.
Admittedly, we were a little nervous. We saw the variety of paintings around the room. Some were incredible, some were not our style, but all were beyond any form of painting either of us had ever done.
How were we suppose to make a summer sun with just two brushes and a five paints on a small plate. I mean, it can’t really be possible.
The first step sounded easy, but both Jessica and I struggled. We were instructed to loosely paint yellow onto our canvas–but not too dark–to set up the location of our sun. It wasn’t until I really utilized the “add water to your brush” tip that mine finally looked more like the instructor’s and not a “caution-wet floor” sign. We then introduced some white in the middle for our actual sun or our “light source” as our instructor called it.
I didn’t quite like the look of the instructor’s sky. It was nice, but for me the brown was too dark. I wanted my sky to still have elements of brown, but I wanted it to be more subdued. So I used more of the “add water water to your brush” tip and I continued to thin out the dark browns of my sky–still using the sequence of painting that the instructor did, but adding my own spin to it. Jessica liked the look of my sky and replicated pieces of it in her own painting.
Jessica struggled with this (she gave me permission to share this with you all). She wanted her grass to look like the instructor’s. She wanted it to be “right.” She became pretty frustrated for a few minutes until the instructor came by. Jessica expressed her frustration of not being able to do it. The instructor told her that she liked the way her painting looked–yes, she hadn’t done the same grass, but she was consistent with it, and that made it look great. The instructor went over the tip for a thinner grass blade, and Jessica added a few of them to her painting (I did as well).
We finished by adding the purple flowers to a few of the grass blades.
Jessica painted for about 20 minutes longer than I did, in part because she needed her paint to dry a bit 
more from one step, in part because she had one minor mistake of having too much paint on the brush at one point and needed to fix it, and also because it does take some time to come to a realization that “I’m done.”
As she continued painting, I cleaned up my brushes and paints, walked around the room, and saw the variety of images. It was surprising. We all had the same instructions. We all were there to paint the same picture, but they were all so different. Some were absolutely gorgeous–actual artists in a class of amateurs. Some excelled in certain steps–the grass blades absolutely perfect or a sun that seemed more like a photograph than a paint. Others looked like they were from my 6th grade art class, lacking that freedom that ultimately makes something appear like art, rather than a paint by numbers drawing.
Jessica had made that switch halfway through her painting. In the beginning she was so worried about it being “right” that she wasn’t as concerned about it being “hers.” Once she made it a painting for her, rather than pleasing the instructor, her painting took on a whole new level.
You can see in these final few photos that we both painted the same picture and yet both paintings are quite different and yet each amazing in their own right.
I think this is how life works.
We all want to paint great lives. There are certain steps that we hope all will follow, but ultimately at a point, you have to make your life your own. You have to find out those things that make you uniquely you and add them to the picture.
Far too often we waste time by comparing our paintings with those around us WHILE we’re painting them. My painting went through times of looking pretty bad, but then another stroke of the brush, or the thinning of a paint with a little more water, brought it back to a place of looking pretty cool. It’s a matter of working the brush.
And at a certain point, we realize that we too can create a masterpiece.
I hope you pick up some paints and continue working on the masterpiece of your own life today.
