This, not summer, is my favorite time of year. While I recognize that winter is just around the corner, I love the shorter days, reading by the fire, the smell of woodsmoke, the crackle of autumn leaves and the wind rattling around the eaves.
There’s something about winter that makes me slow down and think differently.
I don’t stop, I just switch gears
That doesn’t mean I stop painting. Quite the opposite. Winter is a wonderful time to work on the things that are difficult to practice when we’re racing the light, fighting the wind or trying to keep our paint from freezing.
So, I’ve put together three new Zoom classes for the winter season. They’re quite different from one another, but all three are about learning to see more clearly and paint more convincingly.
This is the class for those quiet winter scenes we all love, indoors or out. That might be a still life or it might be a winter nocturne; the first question you have to answer is what story you want to tell about togetherness, simplicity, safety and comfort.
We’ll look at how to organize values, use color temperature, simplify complicated scenes, and create that feeling of warmth and shelter without being excessively cute.
In other words, cozy is a painting problem. And like every painting problem, it can be solved. For more information or to register, click here.
Painting Figures in Real Spaces
I love painting people, but I’m not particularly interested in painting figures as isolated objects. People live, work and play in spaces. They stand in doorways, sit at tables, walk through landscapes, wait in train stations, work in kitchens and gather around campfires. The space around a person is part of the story.
In Painting Figures in Real Spaces, we’ll work on putting figures convincingly into their environments. That means proportion, gesture, perspective, values and edges—but also knowing what to leave out.
You don’t need to become a portrait painter to paint people successfully. You need to understand how a person occupies space.
This class is about that relationship between figure and place. For more information or to register, click here.
After a long hiatus, I’m deep into nocturne painting right now. I suspect that is related to the shortening days; we all like to burrow in at night.
Night painting forces us to rethink color and design. The night is not really black; nor are streetlights or headlights really yellow. Windows aren’t little rectangles of brilliant orange unless the house is on fire. Artificial and natural light at night behave differently.
And then there are edges. Some disappear completely into darkness while others become startlingly sharp.
Painting Nocturnes will look at value, color, artificial light, edges and depth, with plenty of practical painting problems to solve. For more information or to register, click here.
What do I mean by cozy winter painting?
These three classes are really three ways of digging into the changing season: painting its intimacy and the people who share it with us.
And that’s what I mean by cozy winter painting: not staying inside and waiting for spring to start painting again, but painting into the next season with renewed energy.
Online classes start again soon!
- Cozy Winter Painting, Monday evenings, 6-9 PM for three weeks starting November 2.
- Painting Figures in Real Spaces, Tuesday evenings, 6-9 PM for six weeks starting November 3.
- Painting Nocturnes, Monday evenings, 6-9 PM for three weeks starting November 30.
I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:
- New! Color Clinic 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 3-4, 2026
- New! Composition Week 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 5-9, 2026
- High-Desert Light & Monumental Form | Sedona, AZ, Apr 26, 2027 – Apr 30, 2027
Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace: