Workshops – None scheduled at present.

Plein Air Painting with Joan Vienot

Learn from Joan Vienot in a hands-on environment at plein air workshops. Plein air painting is the single best practice for improving your compositional skills, color-mixing, power of observation, and patience with your art. Painting what you see, on-site, in open air will challenge you no matter how skilled you are.

Joan offers several workshops for plein air painters. One is a 3-hour workshop for very beginners, “Introduction to Plein Air Painting”. She also offers a one-day workshop on “Effective Shape-making and Atmospheric Perspective” for skill levels of moderate beginner through advanced. Her three-day workshop is also for moderate beginners through advanced skill levels, a more intense workshop titled “Simplification”, that being one of the greatest challenges facing all plein air painters.


Introduction to Plein Air Painting in Oils

DATE: 3-hours, Friday, November 15, 2019, 9am to Noon — $75.00 — St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL, exact meet-up location to be determined.

Painting “en plein air” is painting on-site, in open air. This workshop is an introduction to plein air painting tools and supplies, choosing a scene or subject, and painting the scene with Joan. It will be approximately 3 hours. It is designed for artists who have not painted outdoors before, or who would like a refresher of the basics.

  • Skill level: Very beginner
  • Advance registration: $75
  • Class size: 3 to 10 people

Shape-Making and Atmospheric Perspective

One-Day Workshop: Shape-Making and Atmospheric Perspective, for Successfully Starting a Plein Air Painting in Oils

DATE: Joan’s next one-day workshop has not yet been scheduled.

This 6-hour workshop focuses on practicing identifiable, effective shape-making and atmospheric perspective in plein air painting, to help the artist create readable shapes and convey receding space, greatly increasing the likelihood of producing a strong painting. Then the real fun of plein air painting, capturing the light, can happen. Using oil paint, Joan will demonstrate concepts, composition, and color-mixing to paint a simplified scene en plein air, and then the artists will have opportunity to paint on their own with Joan mentoring. Instruction will be in oils, but pastel and watercolor artists are welcome as well.

  • Skill level: Moderate beginner through advanced; some experience expected.
  • Registration: $125
  • Class size: 3 to 12 people

DATE: Joan’s next one-day workshop has not yet been scheduled.


Three-Day Workshop in Oils: Simplification

DATE: Tues., Wed., Thurs., November 12-14, 2019, 9am – 3pm — $375.00 — St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL, exact meet-up location to be determined. Bring your sack lunch.

One of the most difficult challenges facing the plein air painter is the overwhelming visual character of a scene — there are so very many details!

This workshop will provide new insight to accomplished painters, and courage for the beginner, with focus on simplification of subject matter, using value and intensity to create believable composition, and enhancement of color through temperature relationship.

Joan Vienot will provide demonstration and instruction in painting en plein air in oils throughout each of the three 6-hour days of this workshop, with individual assistance and mentoring as participants practice the techniques and exercises and later, paint subjects of their own choosing.

  • Skill level: Moderate beginner through advanced; some experience expected.
  • Registration: $125
  • Class size: 3 to 12 people

An optional pre-workshop the afternoon before the 3-day workshop will help the painter decide how to choose a subject to paint en plein air, observing the changing light and shadow, practicing “thumbnail” sketching, and planning interesting compositions. We will be sketching but not painting. Noon to 3pm.

Three-hour optional pre-workshop for 3-day workshop participants, Monday, November 11, 2019, Noon to 3pm — $60 — St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL. Exact meet-up location to be determined.


Have questions about workshops?
You can contact Joan through the Contact Form, or by phone at (850) 259-8394