{"id":486113,"date":"2026-03-20T16:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/486113\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T16:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:19:10","slug":"how-paint-and-sip-events-became-the-worst-thing-to-happen-to-our-social-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/486113\/","title":{"rendered":"How paint-and-sip events became the worst thing to happen to our social lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Women of the UK, brace yourselves. As springtime<\/a> approaches, we are hurtling into one of the most financially and emotionally draining portions of the year: hen-do season<\/a>. It\u2019s a time to live, laugh and love<\/a>. A time to resign yourself to wearing a comedy sash. And a time to sit in the basement of an underwhelming bar and attempt to drunkenly paint a masterpiece while a disgruntled, mic-ed up art student shouts step-by-step instructions into your headset. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve attended any sort of hen event over the past few years, you will be all too familiar with the concept of \u201cpaint and sip\u201d, which has somehow become a ubiquitous and vaguely gendered way to socialise in the years since the pandemic. As a trend, it pre-dates 2020, but I\u2019m convinced that the boom in paint-by-numbers kits during lockdown has a lot to answer for in terms of priming us for the peak paint-and-sip era in which we now find ourselves. <\/p>\n

The idea is simple. You\u2019re presented with a blank canvas, a palette and some splodges of acrylic, then guided through the process of recreating a painting<\/a> that\u2019s been slapped all over the event\u2019s marketing material, all while knocking back a few wines. <\/p>\n

The pictures are designed to be easy enough to be accessible but just about zeitgeisty enough to look good on social media. Scroll through the listings and you will see Aperol-spritz-themed inspiration images, along with Matisse-style abstract flowers, and wine bottles depicted in the style of your favourite Instagram artist. Mamma Mia!-inspired images seem to be particularly popular, too, in a canny bit of cross-pollination (girls, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, just wanna think about ABBA at all times).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just bars that are offering them. Caf\u00e9s and restaurants host them as well, with Galentine\u2019s Day (the celebration of female friendship that is now celebrated the day before Valentine\u2019s) and Mother\u2019s Day acting as a sort of early warm-up for hen-do season. <\/p>\n

They\u2019ve become such a fixture for hens, I reckon, because it\u2019s a little bit edgier than pottery painting, another inescapable crafty trend seemingly precision-engineered to appeal to large groups of women and to fill our shelves with tat, but not as \u201cout there\u201d as life drawing (although you\u2019ll be glad to hear some companies do offer vaguely \u201csexy\u201d prompt images). They are a crowdpleaser, in the sense that they are so inoffensive that even the fussiest maid of honour would struggle to come up with a reason to properly veto them.<\/p>\n

\"TheseThese events have become ubiquitous since the pandemic (Getty\/iStock)<\/p>\n

As a particularly ominous addendum, many events include a warning that you must take your finished picture home once the session has finished. It\u2019s the sort of admonition that clearly stems from experience (probably of a rowdy gang of penis-straw-waving huns forgetting to pick up their paintings before being frogmarched to the next stop on the itinerary by a particularly terrifying bridesmaid). If a disclaimer imploring you not to cast aside your artwork moments after completion isn\u2019t a winning endorsement, then I don\u2019t know what is. <\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t exclusive to pre-wedding celebrations, though. I\u2019ve seen adverts for networking paint-and-sips for arty girlbosses. Paint-and-sips prefixed by a pilates class, where the drinking is very much of the iced matcha variety. Mother-and-baby fingerpaint-and-sips. The possible contexts in which you can paint and sip are seemingly endless \u2013 if you\u2019re prepared to hand over the requisite cash. And painting and sipping doesn\u2019t come cheap.<\/p>\n

In Liverpool, the city where I\u2019m based \u2013 which also happens to be one of this nation\u2019s hen-do capitals \u2013 the cost of the average paint-and-sip shindig tends to hover around the \u00a340 mark. Meanwhile, in London, the capital city premium means that handing over \u00a350 for two hours of sub-par sploshing around with acrylics isn\u2019t uncommon. <\/p>\n

These prices, I should add, don\u2019t tend to actually include the drinks you\u2019ll be sipping on, so that\u2019s an additional expense \u2013 one that also allows you to experience the chastening sensation of queueing up for a gin and tonic in some anonymous chain bar while wearing a branded apron. Unless, of course, you\u2019ve opted for a slightly pricier bottomless-brunch-style package, promising unlimited prosecco in an unholy fusion of two hen-friendly activities. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the free-flowing fizz stimulates creative sensibilities. Perhaps it makes you exponentially more likely to accidentally dip your paint brush into your drink, and dye it some radioactive shade of pink. <\/p>\n

The pictures are designed to be easy enough to be accessible but just about zeitgeisty enough to look good on social media<\/p>\n

What\u2019s arguably more alarming is the way that paint and sip seems to have made ingress into the dating landscape. Thanks to the nefarious and all-pervasive influence of Organised Fun, sitting down for a drink has been deemed, in some quarters at least, to be too stilted a way to get to know someone. Instead, we should all be throwing axes, playing adventure golf, completing puzzles in escape rooms or, in this case, showing off our artistic skills by copying a printout of a Santorini-esque blue dome swaddled in bougainvillea. <\/p>\n

Is paint and sip a dating red flag? I couldn\u2019t possibly say, though I will put forward the tentative theory that it tends to be suggested by the sort of bloke who wants you to think he\u2019s a sensitive, thoughtful type who listened really carefully to your comments about wanting to get off your phone and be more creative… but then planned your date using some lowest-common-denominator suggestions from ChatGPT. <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the question of what you do with your masterpiece once you\u2019re done. Toting a damp painting around a city centre on a Saturday night isn\u2019t massively conducive to romance (oh, I would try to hold your hand, but alas, it\u2019s gripped around the edges of an A4 canvas!).<\/p>\n

And what about when you\u2019re done done, and you\u2019re left with a naff piece of \u201cart\u201d that only brings back memories of an equally naff relationship? In the process of writing this, I was reminded of one such unloved dating relic that\u2019s still lurking face-down underneath a cupboard, where it continues to fester, exuding bad vibes, like the portrait of Dorian Gray for the Hinge era. <\/p>\n

But whether or not your finished picture reminds you of failed forays into dating apps, once the booze-induced buzz wears off, the chances are high that you\u2019ll be left with a poorly executed picture of, say, a croissant \u2013 and one that you have precisely zero desire to display on your walls for public consumption. It\u2019s the visual equivalent of a hangover that never leaves \u2013 and who wants that? <\/p>\n

So if you\u2019ve been conscripted for bridesmaid duty this summer, spare a thought for your cynical and creatively challenged hens. Just book the bottomless brunch instead, no aprons required. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-486113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}