RISD Continuing Education offers the perfect opportunity to celebrate the arrival of summer. Explore the wonders of the ocean and sky through Painting Sea and Sky in Watercolor. Enhance your illustration abilities by focusing on plants and flowers or the creatures living in our seas and oceans. And, in Fundamentals of Plein Air Painting, develop your skills in observing color and capturing the nuances of changing light.
These summer-themed courses are enrolling now:
Painting Sea and Sky in Watercolor
Learn how to “design” a sky using positive and negative space. You’ll use the watercolor medium to its best effect as you explore painting waves, still water, and various cloud types.
Botanical Illustration
Plants and flowers have been an inspiration and source for investigation for artists for hundreds of years. Discover how to create your own botanical illustrations using gouache, an opaque watercolor.
Fundamentals of Plein Air Painting
Explore the fundamentals of landscape painting outdoors, or ‘en plein air’. Topics include setting a value key, simplification and abstraction, developing color relationships to convey a sense of space, and more.
Marine Species Illustration
Marine creatures come in all sizes, shapes, colors and patterns and have expansive creative illustrative possibilities. This course is an invitation to explore and illustrate algae, invertebrates and vertebrates living in our seas and oceans.
If you’re looking for more options, check out our full catalog of courses. Courses fill quickly, so don’t wait to enroll!
Summer 2025 term: June 16–July 27
Registration deadline: June 12, 11:59 pm ET
Student artwork (top): Watercolor painting by Rebecca Morris-Chatta.