Painting with Monet and Merlot! And lots and lots of Pinot Grigio.

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of drinking. You can combine almost anything with drinking and I'll give it a shot. Drinking and exercising? Sure, why not! Drinking and scooping cat litter? I'm up for it! So when the whole drinking and painting thing became a fad, I jumped on that bandwagon, purse full of clinking empties and all. And with some luck, most likely brought on using weekly sacrificial chickens, I've actually managed to churn out a few decent paintings.

This was my first painting- Tiffany's. You can't even see the BBQ pork rind residue!





I started off frequenting Painting with a Twist in St. Pete and loved the concept. I painted the above picture one of the many nights I was left on my own with Bobby out of town so I took my good friend Chardonnay on a hot date with some beef jerky and pork rinds and shocked myself by managing to come up with something that looked that nice. After that, I painted the Coffee Pot Bridge with mom and Aunt Linda. But then Groupon and Living Social came to life and all of a sudden there was a coupon to paint a picture with a new business called Paint with Monet and Merlot and here's the best part- it's held every Tuesday night right at the wine bar in Safety Harbor. Hello mama! I no longer have to bring my own wine in a paper bag like the wino that I am but instead I can order it by the pitcher like the classy wino that I'd like to be! AND they have food! Beat that!


My first painting with Brianna (the owner and teacher) was an interpretation of A Starry Night and I loved it. I duped Bobby into going with me and hanging around Taste Cafe under the guise of 'it's date night' so every time I needed a break, we'd just go make out in the corner. Which was not appreciated so much at the other place. Soooooo sorry, random stranger! But back to Monet & Merlot- they have a Starving Artist night every so often where they offer the class for $20 instead of $40 and they were painting my favorite picture of a skyline at night and it was at Taste Cafe (they have a bunch of different locations on different nights of the week). I was sold. I emailed Brianna and she was nice enough to let me bring my own humongous canvas (seriously, it was twice as large as everyone elses) because I wanted something big enough to go over the bed and honestly, you can only have so many 20"x20" paintings before it starts looking strange. So here was the end result:

This iPad does not take very good photos.

Unfortunately, it is happy hour all night for the painters. Which means that instead of stopping at two glasses of wine, which already makes me pretty tipsy, I went for three glasses and my painting kind of looked like one of the melting Dali paintings but without the artistic talent. Here's a close up of the buildings on the left. Relatively straight.

Then I decided, what the hell, Bobby's driving! And had glass number three and the buildings got progressively drunker also.



They kind of look like crayons left on a hot sidewalk. Hey, still love the painting! Here it is on the new couch because I forgot to show mom the new sofa:

The best part about the classes? It's within stumbling distance from my house. So if you're driving down Main Street Safety Harbor on a Tuesday night and see a drunk lady wandering around with a canvas and half the paint smeared across her clothes, be sure to honk and wave hello! And make sure I'm stumbling in the general direction of my house if you can.

Check out the website for the painting classes at http://www.paintwithmonetandmerlot.com/.