Aha! Seems like someone's hijacked the computers while we weren't looking! Little rascals!
Our local arts center has an even called "Paint & Pour". You bring wine, cheese, etc, and one of the local artists "teaches" and you do a painting of a design they've chosen. I had a meeting in the same building one night while a friend was there taking the class, and came in mid-class when we were done. It was a lot of fun, and the artist (who I really like), had a great scene that they were doing. Wished I could've been a part of it!
I took a watercolors class one summer while I was in college - with a professor that I felt like could have taught me ANYthing in art - had him for a figure-drawing class and a line drawing class, then this watercolor class. I went to his studio once and saw his "planning" process for a HUGE painting he was doing - a typical midwestern farmscape. He was playing out the orientation of the farmhouse and the angle of the sunlight in order to make the most dramatic shadows. So it was like seeing 5-6 shots of the same house at varying times of the afternoon. Brought my love of art and architecture together and it really clicked for me!
Two of my four favorite things I did in his classes, were: a 15 hour line drawing of a house (sitting on a milk crate across the street!), and a watercolor of the same house. Interestingly enough, a colleague from NC came to visit one day, who had lived in Champaign while in high school, and when he saw the painting, he said - "That's the house on Springfield Av in Champaign - across from that REALLY bright yellow one!" Yep! Wow! The third one was a white-on-black (paper) of a balcony at our football stadium - which remains lost to this day, and lastly, a figure drawing of a guy that could hold a pose for an hour, get up & take a break, return and take exactly the same pose for another hour! Man - I can't sit still for five minutes sometimes! Who knew I could actually do something that WASN'T linear or architectural???!!!
So... your painting party sounds like fun! Hope you enjoyed it and that Baxter [mostly] behaved while you were out! Happy Easter!