This 12-week course invites students into the exciting world of abstract mixed media art. Students will explore a wide range of materials, techniques, tools and compositional strategies to create richly layered artwork. Each weekly class will include a clear teaching element, live demonstrations, and handouts to reinforce concepts and spark ideas. Students will receive practical advice, creative prompts, and individualized guidance, while exploring essential topics such as mark-making, texture, layering, contrast, intuitive composition, adding and subtracting, similar but different, balance, and focal points. The course encourages experimentation with tools like brushes, palette knives, color shapers, and unconventional materials. Whether you're a beginner or already exploring abstract art, this class provides a supportive and inspiring atmosphere where creativity thrives.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Birgit Raders-Eichinger
Cost: $570
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

In this multi-week class, students will learn various approaches to illustration, both traditional and utilizing new techniques and technologies. Materials explored included pencil, archival inks, watercolor, gouache, alcohol markers, paint pens, and colored pencils. Students will learn various approaches to pattern-making, cross-hatching, and other forms of mark making as well as combining created imagery into collage.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Emily Pellini
Cost: $190
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Explore your creativity, open your senses and sharpen your mind to new realms of art-making with noted artist Mikel Elam. Mikel will help you articulate your vision and bring it to concrete reality in the form of a finished work. Explore techniques new and old with paint, paper, found objects and ephemera to best express both representational and abstract perspectives. Channel ideas of progressive artists from the past and present including Henri Matisse, Romare Bearden, Cecily Brown, Joan Mitchell while finding your own voice.
 
Location: Philadelphia, PA, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Mikel Elam
Cost: $250
Sponsor: Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio
Website, email, 267-514-8647

This workshop will focus on helping students transform their works on paper, including drawings, paintings and prints into mixed media pieces, with a focus on collage. Instruction will be based on a student’s individual interests and skills and thus is appropriate for beginners through advanced level. Printing methods including monotype, collagraph, frottage and image transfer will be taught. Former students are encouraged to bring in previous work that they consider unfinished or unsuccessful as a starting point for their mixed media experiments and creations. Students will have access to the etching press and printing inks to develop new prints to add to their pieces. See materials list for detailed information on supplies.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Christine Stoughton
Cost: $285
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Painting and printmaking go hand-in-hand, not only as adjacent mediums but in combination. This freeing and instructive course presents printmaking techniques as jumping off points to making mixed media work in spirit of experimentation and personal expression. Learn how to make monotypes, drypoints, and screenprints as a foundation for incorporating your choice of graphite, colored pencil, acrylic, watercolor, oil paint, and/or collage. Content includes technical advice from an artist-instructor ideally skilled in a variety of media as well as critiques to expand your creative boundaries. This class is perfect for painters/draftspeople seeking to expand their processes, printmakers seeking to employ painterly and mixed media techniques, and anyone with love of color and experimentation. Open to all levels – no prior experience required.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Justine Ditto
Cost: $315
Sponsor: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Website, email, 215-972-7632