I went to Paint Monkey for an event with a rather large group. Upon entering the building I was immediately impressed. The exposed brick high ceiling warehouse atmosphere really gets your creative juices going while you rock out to the tunes played from an old school jute box!
The staff was extremely friendly, offering up pointers when needed, but letting you express your own style if that's what you wanted to do. I appreciated that. Oh and the event was BYOB! (and BYOS - bring your own snacks! hehe)
One cool thing they do is a pet day. You can send in pictures of your pet and if they pick it, they will instruct the class on how to paint your pet from a picture. It's way more my style since it is more create something new and less paint someone else's artwork. That is the class most worth checking out, in my opinion.
Oh yeah, and they also offer classes for children. Great for parties for the little ones!
I have done Colors & Bottles before and Paint Monkey totally blows them out of the water. You must check them out if you are someone interested in picking up a paint brush for the first time and want instruction.