Sip and Stroke - Painting Class Review

Painting classes aren't new to me, but Sip and Stroke in Alpharetta was when I attended a class Saturday evening as part of a birthday party.

Pleases Note - this review is not on Sips n Strokes with locations all over Atlanta, this is on Sip and Stroke with one location in Alpharetta.  I'm a pretty loyal person and when I heard about the new company who is obviously trying to use the branding that's already been built by Sips n Strokes to pull in customers, I was quite shocked.  It's a pretty blatant coping of the name and business.  Regardless, I'll continue with my review.

I bought a coupon for me and Stephen on SweetJack so our class was $25 each instead of $35 each - a great deal.  The class was to start at 7:00 but we didn't start painting until well past 7:30.  We did a lot of sitting around.  There was also a big group at the studio for an office party, but they weren't painting the same picture we were painting.  Absolutely annoying.  It's hard to hear instructors in a regular class, with 20 people talking while you're trying to get instruction was very difficult.  It also meant that we were pushed to one side of the studio and had a difficult time seeing the instructor. All of the other painting studios I've been to have had a stage for the instructor to stand on so they were visible to the class, not at Sip and Stroke.  It was very hard to see and I spent most of the class standing during instructions.

In other classes I've been to, the instructor makes it easy to follow her directions and tips. I found the class on Saturday to be very difficult to follow especially when the instructor wasn't even painting along with us.  She'd give instructions then walk away to do something else or have a smoke break.  That makes it very hard to ask questions.  She'd also cover the original painting that we were painting so we couldn't see what our end result should be.  I was pretty unhappy with the instruction.  We seemed to be an inconvenience rather than guests at her studio.  After a time I started to paint how I wanted to paint.

I will say, the instructor was helpful when Stephen and I were starting out to make sure our paintings could be displayed together.  We wanted our paintings to look like one large painting on two canvases, two of the same painting wouldn't have done us good in the same house.  She helped us get started and reminded us to make sure our horizon lines and mountains matched up.  We also had to remember to keep our painting styles similar and to make sure our colors could flow from one painting to the next.

I also think the quality of acrylic paint wasn't as good as what you'll find at other studios.  I'm a very heavy painter and with the paint that I was given I found it hard to get good coverage of the canvas.  It seemed to pull off the canvas easily, even after dry.  It also went on very thin.

At the end of the night, the class was fun because of the people I was with.  It's always great to have a big group of people in this type of class because we're all working from the same original picture, but at the end of the night, all the paintings are different.  I'm very happy with the end result of our paintings and I can't wait to hang them in the house.  I'll definitely attend another painting class, but I'll stick to the original.