Date Ideas

Paint a portrait

$30 on art supplies… easy!

Drawing by Den

It’s wed night, date night… in usual fashion I’ve left it to the last minute. I jump on the $30 Date Night site and start clicking madly through the date suggestions when I stumble upon “paint a portrait of each other – Submitted by Ming from Melbourne.” Perfect, this is tonight’s date, thanks Ming!

I walked into an art supply store and the assistant says “Can I help you?” For those that dont know, I hate being harassed by sales assistants. I paused, and thought… oh fuck it… “ya, maybe you can help me out… it’s $30 date night” The sales assistant seemed all confused, looking at me like, hmmm freak!

Happy Emma!

Drawn by Den

I explained the theory to it… “each week my fiancé and I take it in turns in blowing $30 on an experience we can do together. There’s a website, $30 Date Night, that gives you date ideas you can do with your partner that cost $30 or less. And I’ve chosen the ‘paint a portrait’ date. So I’ve got $30 in back burner and I’m prepared to blow the lot!” She gave me a smile, this cheeky smile, a kind of “nice one bruv” expression, who knows, maybe that was the reaction I was fishing for… both ways, the smile erased the ‘he’s a freak’ look off her face.

$30 got me heaps of goodies… a few graphite pencils in a number of shades, A2 translucent paper (huge paper) a sharpie, eraser… blah… blah… blah…

Drawing by Emma

Drawing was great fun! Both Emma and I have never drawn before, well not since 8th grade school (junior high).

At first I had reservations about doing this date… I hate doing things that I’m no good at. But as it goes the best date nights are the fresh ones, the ones that push comfort circles… its gotta be new experiences.

Lately I’ve sucked at our Wed night thing… so Emma wasn’t expecting much. I did a quick sweep of the house to make it a little more comfortable and after dinner whipped out the art supplies (only after stringing Emma along with how badly planned tonight’s experience was and how much she wasn’t going to enjoy it.

Emma was a little unsure to start with – I decided to start the night off with the first drawing. The beautiful stick figure (above), I think it really captured Emma’s best features!

Drawing by Emma

Em’s, still unsure, jumped on the net for some inspiration on how to draw, and came out with a handy tip… draw negative space first. “what the fuck is negative space???” She explained to me that you start drawing the space around the image to help with proportion. In our drawings, we started with the couch and cushions.

I recommend trying this date… we had fun with.

Once again thanks for the date tip Ming. Ming has added so many dates to $30 date night, Emma and I are a big fan of your date tips. And we’ll eventually get through them. Hopefully you’re inspired to add your own date idea on the generator. Click here to add your own date.

Tags: Paint a Portrait, Thanks Ming