Join Alexa Saxton Thomas for an 8-week skill-building course designed to deepen students’ fluency in watercolor, gouache, charcoal, and pastel through focused study of value, composition, layering, and paint handling. 

Registration is on Alexa’s website here!

Beginning with strong structural foundations in charcoal, students progress into expressive watercolor washes, controlled gouache opacity, and the immediacy of pastel, learning how to integrate media thoughtfully within a single composition. 

Emphasis is placed on value hierarchy, color temperature, spatial clarity, and confident mark-making, while exploring spring subjects such as gardens, interiors, figures, and shifting light. 

Registration is on Alexa’s website here!

Throughout the series, we reference artists from the Old Masters to contemporary painters, analyzing their compositional strategies, use of atmosphere, and material approaches to inform and elevate each student’s evolving personal voice.

Equally important is the community of artists in the classroom: students will share work, give and receive feedback, and draw inspiration from each other’s observations and interpretations, fostering a supportive environment that encourages experimentation, risk-taking, and creative growth.

“Creativity is not separate from life. It is part of living.”

- Ruth Asawa 

Instructor: Alexa Saxton Thomas (bio below!)

Cost: $400 plus cost of art supplies - Register here - not on The Painting School website!

When: Tuesday nights 7:00 - 9:00

Dates: April 14th, April 21st, April 28th, May 5th, May 12th, May 19th, May 26th, June 2nd.

Alexa’s bio: Alexa Saxton Thomas is a painter who earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has lived, worked and held shows in Paris, Rome, Boston and New York. 

Saxton Thomas’ work is heavily influenced by nature and human contact. The work is about light and emotion portrayed as instances held still in time. Colors are often purposefully explosive with vibrancy and high contrast between light and dark. 

The beauty of our natural environment and its psychological impact on us is powerful. The intention in the work is to recreate the fleeting, meditative moment and to suspend it in time forever. 

Saxton Thomas currently lives and works in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.