Apparently My Spirit Horse Kicks Ass

But as Bryan would say (and did) “I could have told you that!”

I bet you’re thinking “What the heck is she talking about, anyway?”

Ha!

Bryan and I took a Painting Lesson the other day at Arctic Crown Canvas (conveniently located right next door to a very good sushi restaurant) where we painted our Spirit Horse! I must say: the results were quite surprising. If you come visit me, you’ll see it propped up on the hearth right in front of the fireplace that I never use.

Bryan was not nervous at all this time until he realized that first: there were no lines or numbers involved (think paint-by-numbers), and second: the end result had to actually look like a horse – or at least, somewhat like a horse. I kept trying to assure him that he was doing great, but it really was a stretch for him.

The class was small, but filled the room to where it was a tad bit crowded. There were 4 tables with 4 people sitting at each one. We all had an easel with our canvas propped up on it, a glass of water, two paintbrushes, and a paper plate with 8 blobs of paint squirted onto it: dark brown, light brown, white, black, blue, dark yellow, bright yellow and red.

The instructor was called T-Rex, and despite her rather intimidating name was actually a rather petite woman with a braid about as long as my own. She assured us that she would help us create a masterpiece – and then actually proceeded to do just that!

Sometimes her instructions were as easy as “Pick up your round brush and get a dab of white paint on it.” But then sometimes her instructions were a bit less so: “You just kind of swirl it around, blending just a little bit here and there so that the colors look the way you want them to.”

The reason I think my Spirit Horse kicks ass, as they say, is that in the beginning the eye was shaped such that it looked evil to me. T-Rex assured me that once we were through with all the layers we were going to add to it that it would look much better.

She was right – it does look much better.

But I still think the evil is in there, simmering just below the surface.