Tuesdays, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Instructor: Roger Chavez  
Six-Week Short Course (18 Hours)  

Cultivate fluid mark-making and bold approaches to subject matter through rapid and loose painting studies. Tight and precise painting, especially in the early stages of an artwork, can sometimes lead to work that appears stiff and over-labored, or to locked-in compositions that are difficult to change or correct. Working from the still life, cityscapes, and the life model, utilize short, small painting exercises to learn new ways of starting paintings, keeping compositions open to adjustment, and both initiating and retaining a sense of freshness in your forms and brushstrokes. Instruction will address color mixing, painting materials and methodologies, and the importance of cultivating viablemethods for growth in your painting practice. Discover the beauty and freedom of loosening up your painting! Note: Tuition includes a $15 models fee.

Image: Roger Chavez

Register by: October 27  
Materials List  
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Tuesdays, 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM  
Instructor: Matthew Courtney  
Six-Week Short Course (18 Hours)  

Combine practicality and creativity through the art of sculpting and throwing functional ceramics. Create bowls, platters, vessels, and more that you can both use and admire every day. Through hands-on instruction and practice, learn essential hand-building techniques such as pinching, slab-building, coil-building, and surface treatments, as well as the basics of how to throw on a pottery wheel. Instruction will cover principles of form, texture, balance, and proportion, in addition to the fundamentals of the firing process. Develop your sculpting skills in a supportive and inspiring environment, and come away with handmade artworks that are both usable and personally expressive. Open to both beginners and experienced artists. Tuition includes a $30 lab fee.

Image: Student work, courtesy of Matthew Courtney.

Register by: October 27  
Materials List  
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Wednesdays, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM  
Instructor: Kate Moran
Six-Week Short Course (18 Hours)  

This six-week painting course invites students to explore color as a personal, sensory, and expressive language. Through sustained painting practice, students will investigate how color is shaped by what we see as well as by memory, emotion, place, atmosphere, and lived experience. 

Working in a variety of aqueous painting mediums, students will experiment with color relationships, expand beyond habitual palette choices, and develop greater sensitivity to the subtle shifts that make color feel luminous, unexpected, harmonious, or emotionally charged. The landscape, urban environment, photographs, and personal objects will provide starting points for paintings and opportunities to examine how observation can be transformed through individual perception. Photography, journaling, and close observation will be used as tools for gathering visual information and becoming more attentive to color in everyday life. Students will keep a color journal that may include photographs, written observations, collected images, painted studies, palette experiments, and other material that can be brought back into the studio and developed through painting.  Small-scale paintings and color studies will encourage experimentation, repetition, and risk-taking, guided by the examples of contemporary artists whose distinctive approaches to color reveal individual ways of seeing and interpreting the world.   

By the end of the course, students will have created a collection of studies that reflect an increasingly confident and personal approach to color.  No previous experience with color theory is required. All levels are welcome. 

Image: Kate Moran, Color Wheel, 2024, gouache on paper, 8 x 8 in.

Register by: October 28  
Materials List      
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.