Classes / Courses
Courses
New course every 6 weeks
6-Week Painting Course
6 classes / 6 weeks
MONDAYS,
6PM–7:30PM
Pacific Time
$199
Join Anytime
Drawing Course
for Beginners
12 classes / 12 weeks
TUESDAYS,
6:30PM–8PM
Pacific Time
$299
New course every 6 weeks
6-Week Drawing Course
6 classes / 6 weeks
WEDNESDAYS,
6:30PM–8PM Pacific Time
$199
Or call for a free consultation: (802) 505-7624
Online & in real time

Essential Drawing Course for Beginners
Every Tuesday, Join anytime
6:30pm – 8:00pm Pacific Time
- 12 live online 1.5-hour classes
- No experience necessary
- Adults and teens 15 years or older
- Access to recordings
You will learn the most important aspects of drawing from the very beginning. You will build the foundation for rendering basic objects and environments, and become ready to practice these techniques with more complex subjects in future drawings. All the techniques of the Essential Drawing Course are done in monochrome (black and white) so you can keep your focus on structure, tonality, shading, form, and texture.
Click here to see the techniques covered in the course.
Online & in real time

Techniques of Soft Pastel
6-Week Drawing Course
Wednesdays, June 29th – August 3rd
6:30pm – 8:00pm Pacific Time
- 6 live online 1.5-hour classes
- No experience necessary
- Adults and teens 15 years or older
- Access to recordings
Always wanted to learn how to use soft pastels? Interested in incorporating color into your drawings? Then take this journey into the colorful world of soft pastels!
Pastels have a depth and richness to them that is unique to this medium. We will begin with the fun of blending colors before moving on to an easy and exciting subject of land, skies, and clouds, and then – to defining shapes in a still life. We will concentrate on the colors of each object and where they are in relation to each other. Before any detail is added, the artwork is filled with life and drama simply by applying color. As the shadows and lines bring the artwork into focus, each artist is encouraged to find their own rhythm and style.
Online & in real time

Perspective: The Enigma Behind Mastery
6-Week Drawing Course
Wednesdays, May 18th – June 22nd
6:30pm – 8:00pm Pacific Time
- 6 live online 1.5-hour classes
- No experience necessary
- Adults and teens 15 years or older
- Access to recordings
Perspective is all around us, but it makes itself invisible to the untrained eye. When artists come to depict any scenery, they get stuck because they lack the ability to see the big picture – they are not able to see the structure that everything is based on. Knowing the fundamentals of perspective makes it surprisingly easy to create interiors, outdoor scenes, streets filled with people, and imaginary scenarios where everyone and everything is in proportion. This skill of perspective drawing is definitely undervalued but we at Prima Materia consider it one of the key abilities for fine artists, illustrators, animators, designers, architects, and life-long learners.

Introduction to Watercolors
6-Week Painting Course
Mondays, July 18th – August 22
6:00 – 7:30pm Pacific Time
- 6 live online 1.5-hour classes
- No experience necessary
- Adults and teens 15 years or older
- Access to recordings
Watercolor is very much a technique-based medium. What we call “technique” is the understanding of the special watercolor properties that you have to know in order to make the best of this exquisite material. This 6-week course is designed to provide you with such information. Beginners welcome – no art experience needed.
If you’ve always wanted to learn how to paint in watercolors for plein air, commissions, or to explore new mediums, this is a course you don’t want to miss!
Online & in real time

Abstract Inspired by Joan Miro
6-Week Painting Course
Mondays, May 23rd – July 11th (no class May 30th or July 4th)
6:00 – 7:30pm Pacific Time
- 6 live online 1.5-hour classes
- No experience necessary
- Adults and teens 15 years or older
- Access to recordings
Why Do Artists Make Abstract Art? Painters create abstraction not because they can’t paint realistic still lifes and portraits, but because they want to explore a different aspect of painting – SELF-EXPRESSION. This Abstract Art course will help you transform your interest in abstract art into the skill to express yourself in a style of your own.
Past Courses
Online & in real time

Cake in Impasto
2-Week Mini Painting Course
- 2 live online 1.5-hour classes
- No experience necessary
- All ages welcome
- Access to recordings
This class is going to be a piece of cake! Inspired by Wayne Thiebaud, an American artist that made a name for himself by painting sweets, candies, and cakes in vibrant colors with thick paint. His signature style is the colorful glowing halo that surrounds his desserts, which he called “halation”. If you look him up, you’ll see he obsessively painted his favorite subjects and in this class, you’ll understand why he just couldn’t get enough.

Drawing Faces With An Unusual Technique
In this class, we’ll show you how to draw a face with a very unusual, rarely used but very effective and fun technique. You will create an expressive drawing of a face in 3D with delicate lights and shadows using your fingers! You may not expect to create impressive art using your hands, but did you know that Masters like Leonardo Da Vinci did exactly that? You’ll experience a new way to draw a face that looks surprisingly real.
No experience? No problem! This class is a fun and beginner-friendly class, where you will learn a lot of new tricks. The instructor will lead you, step by step, through this process.

Portrait in Pieces
6-Week Painting Course
Create a contemporary portrait with contemporary tools. Make a Pop Art painting with the special technique introduced in this course. This technique will combine drawing, masking, tracing, transferring, and painting in one artwork. Utilize your knowledge of tonality, color-mixing, and composing that will help you produce a piece that appears to belong in a modern museum. You will learn how to animate a portrait with a 5-step process. With this method, you’ll create an effect of shattered glass or mosaic with acrylic paint on canvas. There are many ways of creating contemporary art, but this one will be about using familiar tools in new ways.
If you have any questions or doubts about your qualifications, call us at 802-505-7624.

The Classic Style of Pen & Ink
6-Week Drawing Course
Advance your drawing style and achieve high contrast in your drawings. Pen and ink is the medium of restraints and precision, where time investment is key – this is why we will spend the first two classes learning the principles and techniques, and develop a feel for working with pen and ink, and the next four weeks will be dedicated to creating one drawing, to give you the time to add the details. We will go very slowly to enjoy the process of drawing, to savor every pen stroke.
A detailed drawing like this requires you to take your time with each particular area. You have to define and refine each part before you move to the next. This is the difference between pen and ink and other mediums. In this class, we will focus on the specific strategy in pen-and-ink, so you can learn the unique approach that other mediums may not offer you to this extent.

Sculpting With The Brush:
How to Be Van Gogh
6-Week Painting Course
Van Gogh, known for his mesmerizing swirls and textures, is also the Master of form, unsurpassed at creating dimensionality on canvas. In this course, you will learn how to virtually transform your brush into a magic chisel – the ‘sculpting tool’ that builds volume and space with pigment and color. There are many ways to use paint to “sculpt with the brush”, such as building the actual volume – creating a tactile texture like in a barelief, but that is not what we will do. The magic of Van Gogh’s brushwork is that there is no real volume: the entire effect of 3D is based purely on the visual perception of optical dimension.
We will closely study Van Gogh’s ways of making the form three-dimensional. Learning to recreate Van Gogh’s robust brushwork, rich, luminous color, and potent, generous paint application, and especially his ability to sculpt with the brush, will help you transform any object you will be depicting into a weighty, voluminous form inside a convincingly deep space.

Drawing Drapery on the Human Form
6-Week Drawing Course
In this 6-week course, you will learn how to make a masterful drawing of folds, looking at the great masters’ artwork such as Bernini, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo to understand the technique behind such convincing artworks. You will follow in the Masters’ footsteps and create realistic drawings that will express two types of fabrics on two figures: heavy fabric draped over the body and sheer fabric draped over the face, in addition to making helpful studies where you will learn the anatomy of folds.
If you’ve ever struggled with movement and action, drapery is the subject you need in almost all artworks. You are going to learn how to make drapery live, move, and breath – and help you up your game.

The Art of Ideas: How To Use a Sketchbook
6-Week Drawing Course
When you get your first sketchbook, you become a hunter for ideas. “Pray comes to the hunter”, says Olya, definitely meaning the sketchbook. When you have a sketchbook, you start getting a lot of ideas. You never know when your best idea will strike you, so you want to carry your sketchbook everywhere. Everything suddenly becomes worth your attention, and you begin to fill it with random drawings – some of which may turn out to be your body of work in the future!
A sketchbook is a fundamental tool for artists – it’s a must-have for any creative. In this course, you’ll learn how to use it effectively to lay the foundation for all of your future work.

Color Mixing & Color Theory 101
6-Week Painting Course
Painting starts with color-mixing, and this course is the most important course for anyone who wants to try painting. In this course, you will acquire the system for how to set your palette and mix any color you want. Color mixing is like science; anyone who understands it, gets off to a good start.
When you want to learn painting, you must get to know your pigments, their properties, handy shortcuts, and professional tips on the do’s and don’ts of paint mixing.
This course will be devoted entirely to that!

Introduction to Charcoal
6-Week Drawing Course
Charcoal is a true learning medium, perfect for those new to art because it’s the best tool for students. Students in the old academy would draw endlessly with charcoal. It is a forgiving and versatile medium – the ease of erasing and blending makes it a joy to work it. In the end, it gives you a remarkably realistic appearance when a charcoal drawing is taken to completion.
If you’ve tried charcoal and found it messy – this course will show you how to control it. In each class, the instructor will lead you through demonstrations that cover 6 independent charcoal drawing techniques, such as blending, creating texture, using the eraser as a drawing tool, drawing on paper versus canvas, and more.
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