Wednesdays, 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM  
Instructor: Kassem Amoudi  
Ten-Week Course (30 Hours)  

No matter what your preferred subject matter or painting style, this class is designed to help you push your work beyond your preconceived notions of what it should be. One-on-one instruction will develop your unique artistic voice while exploring composition, color, space, rhythm, and technique. Work from personal subject matter (objects or reference materials) to learn how to begin a painting with confidence, trust your instincts, embrace spontaneity, and transform observed forms into a personal form of expression. This mentored studio environment encourages experimentation and intuitive decision-making while helping you both build skills and generate new ideas. Whether you recently started or renewed your painting practice, or are an experienced painter seeking to move beyond your comfort zone, you'll discover new ways to express yourself and find joy in the creative process.

Registration Still Open! 
Materials List   
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Thursdays, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM  
Instructor: Jill A. Rupinski  
Ten-Week Course (30 Hours)  
No class on November 26 (Thanksgiving Break)  

Still life subject matter presents endless possibilities for exploring concepts of color and composition to expand your essential painting skills. Working from eclectic arrangements in PAFA’s dedicated still life room, learn to compose with color to describe form, create visual focus and movement, suggest space, and evoke emotion. Students will become acquainted with color theory and other elements of composition as tools for resolving spatial issues in their paintings. Topics include palette arrangements, color mixing, composing a picture plane through sketching and underpainting, and building a painting surface through direct and indirect painting techniques.

Image Credit: Still Life with Bird Cage by Franklin Chenault Watkins (1955), Gift of James P. and Ruth Marshall Magill, PAFA Collection 

Registration Still Open!  
Materials List   
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Fridays, 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM  
Instructor: Roger Chavez  
Six-Week Short Course (18 Hours)  

Abstract or expressive painting often uses observable subject matter as a starting point or source of inspiration for color, form, and composition. Working from colorful still life arrangements, learn to move beyond identifiable objects and defined contours to explore more expressive or personal means of interpretation. Instruction will address redeploying or adapting observable shapes and colors toward abstract effect, manipulating visual elements to strengthen compositional balance and movement or to reconstruct pictorial space, and employing expressive mark-making for focus or emotional intent. Color mixing and basic oil painting techniques will also be reviewed.

Image: Roger Chavez

Registration Still Open!  
Materials List   
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Tuesdays, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM  
Instructor: Shushana Rucker  
Eight-Week Short Course (24 Hours)  

Learn the fundamentals of painting with gouache, the opaque watercolor paint. Painters of all levels will fall in love with it as a portable, fast-drying, and easy-to-clean-up alternative to oils – great for travel or limited working time and space. Explore color and painting techniques through still life subjects and personal photo references. Students will gain familiarity gouache’s unique characteristics to work on a variety of surfaces, master paint fluidity and control, accurately mix color and predict its effects, and promote its layering capabilities and surface qualities. Open to all levels; prior drawing experience is helpful for any painting course.

Registration Still Open!  
Materials List  
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Thursdays, 12:30 PM - 3:30 PM  
Instructor: Clay Tenhula  
Six-Week Short Course (18 Hours) 

Discover the myriad of possibilities of handmade paper from sheetforming, to painterly pulp techniques, to sculptural forms in PAFA's Brodsky Center Paper Studio. Learn fundamentals or build on previous papermaking knowledge as you begin by forming sheets with a mould and deckle, and then move beyond into working with colored pulps and exploring 3D techniques such as casting and draping paper over armatures to create paper sculptures. Working with cotton, flax, and abaca fibers, experience how paper can fuction as both surface and structure.  All levels welcome. Tuition includes a $50 materials/lab fee. 

Image: Clay Tenhula

Register by: October 8  
Materials List  
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM  
Instructor: Theodore Xaras  
Weekend Workshop (14 Hours)  

This comprehensive workshop covers all aspects of painting a traditional portrait. Topics include achieving a likeness, modeling light and shade, mixing flesh tones and applying paint through various techniques. All participants will produce at least one finished portrait. Includes demonstrations and portrait history. Valuable information for all levels. Note: Tuition includes a $25 model fee.

Learning Objectives

• Students will learn to analyze and construct a portrait using clearly defined steps.
• Students will be able to achieve a likeness through the careful observation of shapes and their color/value equivalent, which together, form the “topography” of the face.
• Students will learn how to mix and adjust colors to produce accurate flesh tones.
• Students will be able to produce one completed portrait, either a head and shoulders or the entire torso and hands.
• Students will be able to paint a recognizable portrait from life.
• Students will gain an appreciation for the art of portraiture from their own work as well as becoming acquainted with historical and contemporary examples as a basis for further study.

Register by: October 9  
Materials List   
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Wednesdays, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM  
Instructor: Rae Helms  
Six-Week Short Course (18 Hours)  
No class on November 25  

This six-week class introduces students to stone lithography, the traditional printmaking method of creating fine art prints from drawings made on limestone blocks. Students will learn the basics of this fascinating process, including graining the limestone to prepare it for drawing, creating an image in oil-based lithographic crayons and ink, etching the stone by means of a chemical process, inking the stone, and operating PAFA’s litho press to print an edition of prints. Students will benefit not only from expert class instruction, but also from access to PAFA’s beautiful, light-filled printmaking facilities (including its selection of limestone blocks) and plenty of monitored lab hours for outside work for the entire length of the course! Note: Tuition includes a $20 lab fee.

Check out this informative illustrated explanation courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

Register by: October 21  
Materials List   
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.

Fridays, 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM  
Instructor: Roberto Osti  
Six-Week Online Short Course (Zoom + Asynchronous Content; 18-Hour Equivalent)  
No class on November 27 (Thanksgiving Break)  

Copying from masterworks is a time-honored form of artistic instruction and an excellent means of studying the art of portraiture in particular. Hone your oil painting skills using both alla prima (direct painting) techniques and indirect methods of building form and color through layers. Master painting references from artists such as Paxton, DeCosta, and Manet will be carefully selected to cover foundational paint-handling techniques, composition, color theory, and mixing flesh tones using a limited palette, as well as painterly methods for depicting the structure of the head, facial features, and hair. This class offers a fascinating way to internalize the techniques and aesthetic decisions of successful artists and incorporate them into your own artistic expression.

Register by: October 23  
Materials List   
Please review CE’s Fall 2026 Policy Guide, including Withdrawal/Refund Policies, prior to registering.