It’s time to begin your own Adventure of Painting.
AOP is your home for landscape painting classes that excite, challenge, and inspire.
“The artist should always be the student.”
- Edgar Payne
Adventure of Painting (AOP) is your guide to shaping how you see, think, and create as an artist.
I believe the best artists are perpetual students, always curious and eager to grow. That's why I've designed AOP as a path of continuous discovery, not a destination.
The approach interweaves essential concepts, practical skills, and practice to help you develop a deeper understanding of—and satisfaction in!—your craft.
Throughout the Signature Course, Refining Your Process, Painting the Last 10%, the Continuing Education Membership, and beyond, AOP is your home for artistic development, rich learning, and joy in the lifelong adventure of painting.
I'm Scott Christensen, landscape artist, educator, and founder of Adventure of Painting
Join me in the adventure.
Inside the Adventure of Painting philosophy
What is it you want to say in your painting and how do you want to say it?
Finding good answers to tough questions is both the richness and reward of being an artist. We’re forever pursuing the aliveness we feel in a scene, and working our way through all the blocks that come up as we try to translate it to canvas.
That’s the real adventure of painting—dedicating ourselves to the discovery, study, and practice that helps us orchestrate our ideas more fully.
Beyond perfecting one painting or a single technique, it’s all about developing your painter’s mind and the tools to look at the world differently.
Adventure of Painting is your guide as you learn to break apart what you see, put it back together with intention and more skill, and grow as an artist in your unique style.
Curiosity, good practice, and time spent immersed in the work are your best companions along the way.
If painting is your way of making sense of the world, of enjoying nature’s beauty, of sharing your perspective, this adventure is for you. There’s always another layer to uncover, another problem to solve, another question to ask that brings you back to the work, and that’s the joy of it.
So let’s pick up the tools. Develop the ideas. Refine our execution. And stay lifelong students of this craft together.
The Adventure of Painting process is rooted in…
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Everything is an investigation. There’s always something new to notice. Finding your idea, finding what you want to say, and then finding your way through is at the heart of painting. You develop your painter’s eye and painter’s mind through curiosity.
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Finishing a painting is a moving target, and the study it takes to get to that place is what it’s all about. You have to get something down to find out where you want to go. Through practice, you can break things apart—an idea, a composition, a plein air scene—explore each piece, and put them back together again.
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Knowledge precedes execution. You can’t paint better than you know how. And the most important magic ingredient is time. 10-20 minutes of study each day will help you find your way and lead to growth that you can barely believe. Putting that time in is everything. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but it has to be diligent.
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An artist doesn’t look for a finish line where they’ve “made it”—they follow their learning all the way through. Become a student of the game, and stay in it. Revel in instruction and experimentation, and find joy in getting out there to practice.
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We all have fears when we’re trying to work through a block, something new, or an idea we can’t figure out how to break apart. Make this search an adventure, and a part of your process. Try and experiment until the inhibitions roll away. Use your paint and embrace the “doing” part every step of the way.
Ready to begin your adventure?
Join us in the AOP Signature Course!
The AOP Signature Course is the foundation to developing your painter’s eye and your painter’s mind.
Across four online, self-paced series of video modules, I guide you through the process of finding your idea, developing it through studies, and refining it on your canvas. We cover the fundamentals that I continue to practice to this day in every painting I create, helping you grow your skill and artistic vision.
The course is perfect for beginners and seasoned painters alike, working in oil, gouache, or any other medium.
Join us and begin your adventure!
The AOP Signature Course offers:
4 “Adventure Series” of short, easy-to-digest videos that build on core concepts like value, composition, massing, key, color, and so much more
Over 12 hours of instruction across 59 videos, ideal for working through and then revisiting at any time throughout your painting adventure
Guided assignments to advance your learning, develop your painter’s mind, and help you solve your tough questions like an artist
Infinite inspiration to fuel your love of painting
Lifetime* access to all course content, so you can return to particular topics as needed, no matter what you’re working on
* ’Lifetime’ as it refers to AOP means for the lifetime of the course/as long as the course exists.