Wine & Canvas

Gone here twice with family! Let us bring in our own food and birthday cake. Instructors are patient and very kind and they can help anyone learn how to paint. They are also very friendly and don’t care if you freestyle your art a little. No complaints here. Overall wonderful night out.

Pros:
Something fun and different! Canvas, paint, and instruction provided in cost of ticket. Groupons often available.
Cons:
Uncomfortable stools (though chairs may be available upon request). If you don’t get a good seat in the front it can be hard to see instructor.
Review:
Today is the first day I’se been to a wine and canvas event and I have to say it was a blast. Such a fun and unique experience. The best part is, the painting is a reminder of our night out with the girls. I’ll go back again for sure!

Some friends and I attended a wine & canvas class last night for a friend’s bachelorette party. I must say… I thought my painting would be the ‘ugly duckling’ we all have seen in the Facebook posts of friends who have done these things before. I’m happy to say, no one had a bad painting. It wasn’t because of our talent either, but because the instructor was so incredible and helpful! Yes, the instructions she gave can be somewhat elementary, but you teach to the lowest in the room and with 50+ people you have a lot of explanations to give, so keeping it simple saved time in the long run.
No, there is not wine included, but the maid of honor in our party did her research and let everyone know that ahead of time so I was not let down. I will say, I’m a cheapskate, so the $ 35 was a bit expensive to me, but I came home with a painting my husband truly thought was paint by number (just filling in what they’ve done for you) because I did such a great job. I’m very proud of my painting, so the $ 35 wasn’t so bad after the fact. And, if you compare to other local wine & paint places, $ 35 is about as cheap as you can find it!
I’m now hooked and can’t wait to attend another class!

Great for a girls night out! They made painting so easy and i felt like a real artist! Only wish the wine was included!

My friend held a private event here for her bachelorette party, and I think everyone had a lot of fun. At first I was thinking this probably wouldn’t be worth $ 35, especially since that doesn’t include any wine, but it definitely is worth the $ 35!
Our instructor was incredibly helpful, nice, and very thorough in explaining every step. If you needed help, she would come over to you and give personal attention. When we first began our paintings, I was really skeptical that my picture would turn out looking decent, but everyone’s picture seemed to turn out well! Seriously, the worst artist can come here and create something beautiful. The whole thing flies by pretty quickly.
The whole thing was very relaxing, and I’m trying to get a group together to do a private event! I want to go back! The whole thing is about three hours long, and obviously you get to keep the canvas… I almost think $ 35 is a bargain for the whole experience. Wine is $ 4 a glass, and you get a nice little pour. It’s really not bad, as it would probably be $ 6+ for a glass at a restaurant. They did not have any particularly sweet wines when I was there, but there are about 4 bottles to choose from… not sure if they rotate what they have or if it’s always the same.
You can bring snacks, at least to the private events, which I would recommend. It’s nice to snack on things while you paint. It is not BYOB. There is a 10 minute intermission where you can mingle a bit and go around and look at everyone’s paintings. After the session is over, they clean up everything, so that’s especially nice!

This was a great girls’ night out but, with a name like Wine & Canvas, I did expect one drink to be included. It was a little pricey for just the painting instruction.

$ 35 is a little pricy, especially since the wine is an extra $ 4/​glass, but I had a good time and liked my finished product even though I do not have an artistic bone in my body. I would go again.

So, I did not expect to get free drinks. Maybe one, but I went there expecting to buy a glass of wine for my mom and me. It was $ 4 a cup, which they filled to the top for me. I don’t mind spending the money on it because I spent $ 70 on the two seats… what’s another few dollars?
I’ve always been an art student, but painting was not my favorite. I thought the atmosphere was really great and fun, the staff was really nice and helpful. I loved the turnout of my bird and I’d like to paint more often now. :) The brushes weren’t from the dollar store because I own dollar store brushes and the bristles will fall out and get into the paint on the canvas. I did not have the problem so I can assume that these brushes are a step up. Still cheap, but I’ve used worse.
It was extremely cramped. I could do with another two to three inches on each side of me. I also found myself using a different brush size than the one she recommended the entire time (but that’s just what I prefer).
If there’s a groupon deal for this place, I would like to go again and I would definitely recommend to someone who is looking for something to do.

I guess I knew beforehand not to expect free booze with the Wine & Canvas event so I wasn’t as incredibly disappointed or unreasonably angry about this as some of the previous reviewers.
I promised my wife we would do one of these painting things several months ago for her birthday but the stars of available babysitter, weekend night off and open class didn’t align until last night. I have to admit, I wasn’t completely excited about doing this activity. I like to draw and doodle, but I’m definitely no artist. Except for art class in elementary school, I have no experience with painting either (walls in our house don’t count, I guess.) So, I approached the night of the painting class with no small amount of trepidation as I was worried that my left brain/​perfectionist self would be really disappointed in the quality of my painting and it would be a waste of a date night.
I’m happy to say I was wrong. Our instructor was very friendly and encouraging, repeatedly telling us that the paint (water-​based) was forgiving of mistakes and that whatever we did with our canvas was ok, since it was our interpretation of what we were seeing. The instructor’s attitude helped me (and hopefully others) relax and go with the flow. The folks in our class were friendly (probably helped by the wine and beer) and contributed to the fun atmosphere. The three hours passed pretty quickly and I was pleasantly surprised with my finished product. And during those three hours, I didn’t worry about work, bills, the economy, pollution, threats to world peace, etc… Just painting. Plus, my wife was really happy with me for doing something a little different for a date night.
I’ve seen some complaints about the cost of the activity, but if you’ve ever priced art supplies, it is easy to see how it adds up. Throw in time for employees and the cost of the storefront and $ 35 shouldn’t be a terrible affront to one’s economic sensibilities. We live in a world where we willingly pay $ 4+ for coffee and $ 10 for a cocktail. Dinner out or an evening at the bar is going to probably be more expensive. If the cost is an issue, you can always wait for a Groupon or Living Social discount.
I won’t be hanging my painting on our walls (if you’re expecting to generate gallery worthy art, you should probably adjust your expectations.) But something interesting happened this morning when our kids saw our paintings. Rather than wanting to watch cartoons or play on our iPads, they both wanted to get out their art supplies and paint. How cool is that?

I wanted to provide another review of Wine & Canvas (to give more feedback and also to offer a different experience). I went with a couple friends to an event tonight, and we had a great time. I can be rather thrifty, but I definitely felt that I got my money’s worth from the class. A three-​hour painting lesson/​girls’ night plus a nice canvas painting to take home made the $ 35 seem reasonable for a fun splurge.
A couple things to note:
1. Yes, the company’s name (Wine & Canvas) can be someone misleading. I originally thought it was bring-​your-​own-​wine, although I realized this was not the case after going to their website. *Tip — If you can make a class on Wed. at Mimi’s Café, they have ½ bottles of wine all day Wednesday (after the discount a bottle is $ 10 – 13). Split among a couple people, it is quite a good deal!
2. At the beginning of the class they made a point of noting that we could have as much paint was we wanted, but we would only get ONE paper plate. Also, they give everyone a container of water to clean the paint brushes, and that is all the water you get for the rest of the night. I was a rather messy painter, but I made it work without problem. Honestly, I think this has to do with the restaurants’ policies (not disposing of paint in sinks, etc) and the need to minimize trash (since they do all the clean-​up).
The instructor was helpful and nice, and the facilitator was quite peppy for a Wednesday evening. They gave good instructions along the way, and our paintings all corresponded to the demo picture… with our own touches, of course!
We had fun and would definitely recommend it!

This was my first experience doing a group «wine and painting» event. I had seen several of my friends participate in them before and it looked like a good time, so I was really looking forward to a night of wine and fun with 7 of my friends.
I paid $ 35 for my ticket. (So just between my friends and me, we spent $ 280. And there were at least 30 total people at this class, which means that over $ 1,000 was brought in by Wine & Canvas for the evening.) The actual NAME of this business is «Wine & Canvas» so — silly me — I assumed that my money was paying for wine and an instruction for a canvas painting. Nope! No wine included! Not even one glass of cheap wine, which would cost them almost nothing to purchase in bulk. All 8 of the people in our group were under that same impression, so we were obviously disappointed. Their answer when we asked about it was, «No wine is included. ‘Wine & Canvas’ means you are welcome to BUY your own wine from the restaurant while we do the painting.» Ummm… what? I refused to order anything from the restaurant where it was held out of sheer spite, since I already paid $ 35 for a painting that I had to make myself.
I probably would have eventually gotten over the lack of wine if the girls running the event weren’t so rude. There were 2 Wine & Canvas employees there: the artist who was instructing us in the painting, and another worker to facilitate things.
First of all, this artist HATED the fact that she had to teach a bunch of non-​professional artists how to make a painting. Every time one of us asked a question to make sure we understood how to do it correctly, she didn’t even attempt to hide her disdain. She hated us and was totally annoyed the whole time. And she was going SO fast that half the class was completely behind and couldn’t keep up with her. We were missing steps and confused about which color went where. And here is the worst part: the painting we were doing was moonlight reflecting over some water with hills and trees, etc. The day after the event, I was showing the painting to a co-​worker of mine and she said, «Where is all that light supposed to be coming from? There is no moon.» So I went back to the Wine & Canvas website to look at the painting I signed up for and there is definitely a moon in that original painting. This instructor completely forgot to have us paint the moon… so now I don’t even want to hang it anywhere so no one else notices and makes me look like an idiot.
The other girl who was facilitating the event didn’t want to be there any more than the artist did. There was a lot of color mixing to do for this particular painting, and when someone asked her for another paper plate because they ran out of room to mix, her response was, «Everyone gets one plate.» Call me crazy, but if I am paying $ 35 for something called ‘wine & canvas’ that doesn’t include wine, I think I should be entitled to an extra paper plate if I need it. Later, someone else asked for fresh water to clean their brushes out. This time her response was, «We use the same water throughout the class.» And there was no way we could get up and use the restaurant’s bathroom to get clean water ourselves, because the instructor was going so fast we would have missed half the painting if we walked away for 5 minutes.
Overall, I was extremely disappointed in how Wine & Canvas runs their events. First and most importantly, their name is misleading and should be changed. In the interest of full truth, if you poke around their website a lot, you will find something in tiny print that says alcohol is not included. But why would I even think to look for that with a name like Wine & Canvas? And if you are not going to give me alcohol, you should have very pleasant, patient and helpful employees, which they don’t.
I will not be doing this again. If you choose to try a wine and painting event, I strongly suggest you try a different company.