Start Your Own Family Art Night
Or join a "non-family" one.
A couple of years ago, a family member on my husband’s side passed away. He had been a professional artist for many years. When we went to help organize his house, we were able to inherit a very small number of his art supplies.
Later, we and a few other family members were gifted a few more “plein air” art supplies for Christmas. At our annual Thanksgiving gathering and summer family reunion, we decided to coordinate bringing our art supplies and spend a little time, while together, doing a few mini “plein air” painting sessions as a group.
The family lives all across the US, so gathering all together in person is infrequent and difficult. With a general consensus that we were all having fun with our new painting hobby, though some (eh hem) were taking it a bit more seriously than others, we decided to meet up on zoom a few times to continue the momentum! At first weekly, but eventually settling on 2x per month. It started small, but more people in the family learned about our art nights and started asking to be invited. Slowly it grew, and continues to grow and shift each month.
Whenever I share something I’ve created from a “Family Art Night,” I get a variety of reactions, mostly expressing how neat or cool it sounds to have regular family meetings where we create art. They wish they had that!
After chatting with a friend, who had a similar sentiment, we started discussing the details of how to actually execute an ongoing virtual Art Night, and he encouraged me to share those ideas here. So here we are! Below you’ll find format ideas for how you could host a family art night of your own!
CREATING A FAMILY ART NIGHT
Who
Blood relatives, family through marriage, chosen family, or even non-family! Friend Art Night is amazing too!
What
Art/Creative activities together with loved ones. This can be any kind of art. Sometimes we all do the same thing, sometimes we all do different things. I’ll share more specific ideas below.
Why
It gives you a regular opportunity to connect, without the weird lags in conversation when there’s nothing to talk about. If people stop talking, it’s mostly because they’re working. Conversation flows naturally.
It gives you a designated time and space to work on something creative, just for fun.
It gives you a new angle, and a new way to connect with your loved ones in a way that you may not know them well.
How
Now that, ultimately, is up to you! But based on our time together and a few other ideas I got from my friend Mandell Conway, here are some things you could consider when setting up your art nights.
Meeting Space
If you can meet in person, I think that would be best. If you can’t meet in person, meet virtually! Zoom only offers 45-minute call times with free accounts. Many people have access to Google Meet or Teams. There are a number of other options available, too, which can be discovered via an online search. (If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments below!)
Meeting Frequency
This probably depends most on your group preferences. We started weekly, which was great for me and a few others who really wanted to dive into art, but it was too frequent for most and ultimately ended up being hard to keep up. We switched to 2x per month. If people can’t attend, they just skip and catch a future one.
Meeting Time/Duration
We meet on Thursday evenings for 90 minutes, starting at 9PM Eastern since most of the family live further west. 60~90 minutes feels good – people come late or leave early as they need to. Day and time will depend greatly on your family’s availability. You could also move the date and time around to make sure no one is left out.
Meeting Setup/Agenda
At first we started doing guided tutorial videos. Initially we each purchased one of these books and did her videos together via screenshare. After a while some people were falling away from watercolor, and wanted to do other things like crochet, quilting, drawing, coloring, etc. So we switched to “free art.” When we did that, we realized that not having a predetermined topic was also proving difficult. So recently we started a new system…
One of the calls per month is “free art” with no topic.
The second call is a “guided topic” chosen by one family member. They can provide short videos, tutorials, reference images, or just the topic idea and nothing else. Each “host” chooses their own topic and their own way of presenting it. This gives half the calls a little structure, and the other half no structure. We keep track of who has volunteered and which topic they’re presenting in a shared Google Sheet.
Sharing Your Art
Depending on the platform you choose, there are a number of easy ways to share your art with each other. We often hold up our art at the end of each video call, but camera quality or lighting can make it difficult to see the images well. Some more ideas for sharing art (and keeping the conversation going between calls) include:
Zoom chat uploads (Zoom now has a “continuous chat” feature you can post in anytime)
Google Doc/Drive (or other shared drive) uploads
A text chain or WhatsApp Group1
Another social platform group feature
Email chains
ART TOGETHER with Follow Your Art
Not everyone has family that likes art, or wants to do art, and not everyone has family that they want to spend time with in this way.
If you’re into art and want to be part of this kind of community, I’m creating one here on Substack. 💕 It’s for friends, family, anyone who wants to do more art (or creativity), and be in it together. Our first call is TOMORROW! (3/12/2026, 8:30 PM EDT - zoom link and details on the member resources page here.) For our first one I’m inviting members of Follow Your Art, and a +1 to join the fun. See you there?
What do you think about building your own Family Art Night? What would you change or add from my ideas above? Can’t wait to hear what you do! Post in the comments below.
Know someone who would love to create a Family Art Night? Share this post with them!
Know someone who would rather join Follow Your Art - Art Together calls? Gift them a subscription!
See a few of my “Family Art Night” creations below!
Warmly,
Lana K.
I prefer WhatsApp to group texting when possible. Group texts can be a bit invasive and hard to manage/keep track of/edit - especially when people have different phone types (iPhone vs. Android, etc.). WhatsApp puts everyone on the same technology and gives you greater notification controls. It also allows you to add or remove people as they wish, and you can include people who live in different countries.
What a lovely idea! Sharing a scheduled, continuous activity together is a great ongoing way to be together. It keeps lots of regret of not seeing people out of your mind. Thank you
What an excellent idea, my daughter has always drawn and my son is showing interest in painting it’ll keep us all off of our screens for the night, great read :)