Back in February, 2020, right before the world came to a screeching halt, I saw an ad on my FaceBook page for a local business called Pinot's Palette. It's the type of art studio known as a paint and sip, which means you go there to drink wine and learn how to paint. The wine is important, because the more wine you consume, the better your painting will be.
I decided to go, and it was so much fun that I was determined to sign up for a class each month. But then, pandemic. Luckily, after several weeks, the studio figured out how to offer kits for pick up, which you could do from the comfort of home while watching a live video class. I was thrilled, both because it meant I had an excuse to leave my house long enough to drive to the studio to get my kit, which was possibly the most excitement I had all week, and also because I didn't have to worry about driving home after the "sipping" portion of the evening.
So, I did a few of these classes, and then the studio came up with a truly brilliant idea. They started offering the classes super cheap if you had your own supplies and only wanted to access their pre-recorded video. At this point in the pandemic, I may have been going a little loopy, because the next thing I knew, I had signed up for fifteen classes. Just in the month of June. A few days later, the Amazon guy was on my doorstep with an easel, an assortment of paint brushes, twelve jars of acrylic paint, and two dozen canvases.
For about four weeks, all I did was paint. It was actually a lot of fun, although I did miss the camaraderie of strangers who were also drinking wine and struggling to make something remotely similar to the example painting. While I was doing this, I started thinking about the story that would eventually become Hearts in Motion. I knew that one of the main characters would be a doctor, and that her love interest would need to be very different from her in every way. In short, this is how the character of Tyne Briggs became the owner of a paint and sip studio.
Check out the gallery below for photos of some of my pandemic paint and sip creations!