Enjoy open-air painting in beautiful Valley Forge National Historic Park on the National Historic Register. The church site of George Washington’s Continental Army in 1777-1778 and now home to lush scenery and historic architecture! Located in Montgomery County, 35 minutes northwest of Center City Philadelphia, with ample parking and access to restrooms. Working from diverse landscape subject matter, students will learn essential plein air approaches, including color mixing to achieve a sense of light and air, capturing time of day, compositional fundamentals, and sound drawing and painting practices. Instruction is geared toward oil/acrylic painting and pastel drawing/painting. Meeting at the Washington Memorial Chapel parking lot.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Joseph Sweeney
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Enjoy the expressive possibilities, portability, and vibrant color of traditional watercolor, watercolor pencils, or watercolor markers for open air landscape drawing and painting! Work with either drawing or water-based applications or combine them for luminous mixed-media studies as you portray the beauty of autumn in Philadelphia’s parks in your own personal style. Learn techniques for choosing a composition, mixing and layering color, and working efficiently outdoors as you complete a series of rapid sketches and at least one sustained drawing or painting. Open to all levels. Painting locations featuring shade, restrooms, and other amenities may include Wissahickon Valley Park, Glen Foerd Mansion, and Brandywine River locations. Note: Students are responsible for their own transportation to painting locations.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Michelle Oosterbaan
Cost: $265
Sponsor: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Website, email, 215-972-7632

Join veteran plein air artist Joe Sweeney for a unique opportunity to paint inside one of the oldest rowing clubs in Philadelphia: the Bachelors Barge Club on Boathouse Row. Work from picturesque views of the Schuylkill River with the benefit of full access to the historic building with access to the dock, rain-/sun-sheltered porch, and amenities including restrooms. Experienced guidance will cover tactics for working efficiently outdoors, selecting a composition, color mixing, and capturing time of day and atmospheric effects. Instruction and demonstrations will be geared toward acrylic, oil, and pastel painting, but experienced watercolorists are welcome to participate. Note: Students are responsible for their own transportation to painting locations.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Joseph Sweeney
Cost: $265
Sponsor: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Website, email, 215-972-7632

Students may elect to draw or paint, using a variety of mediums. Open to all levels, from beginner to experienced.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Michael Doyle
Cost: $300
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Working from your own reference material, we will spend each week focusing on a particular aspect of landscape painting. Individual techniques will be held each session in a supportive atmosphere. Syllabus will be provided. Please bring painting materials to the first class. All mediums welcomed.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Bonnie Mettler
Cost: $540
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Paint on location at Philadelphia's historic Fairmount Park mansions including Laurel Hill Mansion, Ormiston Mansion, Woodford Mansion, Strawberry Mansion and Ridgeland Mansion! Built in the 18th century, these houses feature amazing architecture, beautiful gardens, and scenic views. Each week will feature a different instructor who will demonstrate oil, watercolor/gouache and pastel techniques, reference art historical examples, cover the ins-and-outs of working outdoors and encourage personal expression. Includes a tour of each historic house (optional)! Work with the materials of your choice including watercolor, oil, acrylic and drawing media. Restrooms and free parking will be available.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Various
Cost: $250
Sponsor: Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio
Website, email, 267-514-8647

Learn how to paint beautiful landscapes on location! In this class, we will discuss the fundamentals of painting en plein air as well as more advanced topics like drawing, composition, and color theory. The first day will begin with a 30-minute lecture and discussion on the core concepts of plein air painting. This will be followed by a 2.5-hour painting demonstration. After a 1-hour lunch break, students will begin work on their own paintings while Marc gives individualized instruction. Class will end at 4pm, but students may continue to paint if they wish. Days 2 and 3 will follow a similar format. The class will end with a group critique and discussion.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Marc Anderson
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Explore the colorful world of soft pastels! Color theory, layering and the use of toned paper will help you maximize vibrancy in your pastels. Learn to allow touch and mark to inform your work and avoid over-working. Art historical artists will be discussed to give grounding in the pastel tradition and provide examples to build upon. The workshop will take place in the Cerulean Arts' backyard garden (weather permitting). All levels welcome, from beginner to advanced and all forms of expression from realist to abstract. The workshop will include a tour of Keith's Cerulean Collective exhibition, on view September 16 - October 11.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Keith Leitner
Cost: $95
Sponsor: Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio
Website, email, 267-514-8647

Join us to photograph the beautiful fall season! Classes will alternate between out on location and in the studio to discuss techniques, share images and compare notes. The first class will meet at Wayne Art Center. We will discuss technical and artistic fundamentals of photography including choosing your subject, your lens, point of view, exposure and composition. During subsequent studio meetings we will share and discuss images we created while out on location. On scheduled dates, we will meet outdoors at local sites to explore and photograph the environs. We’ll share ideas about subjects, composition, lenses and camera settings to get the best possible result. Bring your own DSLR or mirrorless camera. Compact cameras are acceptable. Tripods are optional.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Laura Ducceschi
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Discover a deeply intuitive, painterly approach to drawing. In this workshop, you will learn the art of subtractive charcoal drawing, covering your paper in dark tones and using erasers to literally sculpt the light. Working from photographs, we will demystify the landscape, exploring how to simplify dense foliage, sculpt tree trunks, and create atmospheric perspective using value rather than outline. This class will be fun and a bit messy. Ideal for painters looking to strengthen their tonal compositions and illustrators looking for a more initiative drawing style.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Claire Haik
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Students will strengthen core watercolor skills while learning how to paint atmospheric landscapes, convincing reflections in water, and lively streetscapes. Each week builds on the last, introducing new techniques, composition strategies, and subject challenges. Lets have fun painting in a loose, impressionistic manner by learning how to simplify and edit scenes to come up with convincing paintings using your own photographs. Hands on step by step guidance and instruction will be provided.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Radhika Srinivas
Cost: $250
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

This two-day workshop explores how artists can use limited palettes, dominant color relationships, and value structure to create landscape paintings with greater mood, atmosphere, and emotional impact. Through demonstrations, discussion, and hands-on painting exercises, students will learn how simplifying color choices can create stronger design, clearer visual statements, and more expressive paintings. Student Level: Open to painters with prior experience (beginner through advanced). This workshop is not intended for absolute beginners with no painting experience. Medium: Oil is preferred; however, painters working in other media are welcome provided they have prior experience in their chosen medium.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Mark Vander Vinne
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Every strong painting begins with a thoughtful foundation. In this one-day workshop, students will first explore applying transparent patches of vibrant color to the painting surface, creating an energetic underpainting that adds excitement and provides color relationships to build upon throughout the process. From there, we'll establish transparent darks to define the value structure, composition, and overall color harmony. You'll learn to mix a variety of rich, colorful darks while connecting dark shapes to dark shapes and light shapes to light shapes, creating visual pathways that guide the viewer's eye through the painting. Once the design is established, we'll transition to thicker, opaque light passages, bringing the painting to life with clarity, unity, and luminous color.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Fred Jackson
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Students may elect to draw or paint, using a variety of mediums. Open to all levels, from beginner to experienced.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Michael Doyle
Cost: $300
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

This class will explore the process of working in the studio from photographs looking at both historic and contemporary examples, as well as class demonstrations and individual instruction. We will sort through the inherent strengths and weaknesses of using the photograph as the basis for a painting. Jon will also discuss ways to manipulate your photos with the iPhone and how to choose the best photos from which to work.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Jon Redmond
Cost: $250
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553

Water: It’s all around us -- streams, rivers, lakes, oceans, atmospheric effects, and more. It's a key ingredient in watercolor painting, regardless of the subject matter. But how does the artist create the illusion of water in a painting, regardless of the medium? This two-day workshop will present key tactics an artist can employ when painting bodies of water. Examine the nature of reflections, water movement, how water appears under various weather and lighting conditions, and more. Instruction includes demonstrations of how to incorporate various water effects in your own work and a review of the ways master artists historically have portrayed water in their paintings over the years. Open to all levels.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: James Toogood
Cost: $225
Sponsor: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Website, email, 215-972-7632

This class breaks down the landscape into three essential zones: foreground, middle ground, and background. We will look at how color and value shift in each of the three zones and learn how to use dramatic value contrast and scale shifts to guide the viewer's eye exactly where you want it to go. Together we will design landscapes with strong foreground elements (such as a large tree, dark grasses, or a winding pathway) that lead to a clear middle ground and then back to a deep atmospheric vista. Open to artists at all levels who want to create depth in their paintings and try a structured approach to landscape painting.
 
Location: Wayne, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Claire Haik
Sponsor: Wayne Art Center
Website, email, 610-688-3553