Find answers about learning to paint landscapes with Adventure of Painting, accessing your course content, and more.

Adventure of Painting (AOP) is your home base for landscape painting instruction for artists of all levels. 

Founded by Scott Christensen, fine artist and educator, AOP offers several courses and education opportunities, including the AOP Signature Course, Refining Your Process, Painting the Last 10%, the AOP Continuing Education Membership, and occasional in-person and online workshops and events. 

The Adventure of Painting Signature Course is an online, self-paced landscape painting course. Over more than 12 hours of video instruction, I guide you through the process of finding your ideas, developing them through studies, and refining them on your canvas. 

The course is open to artists of all levels and mediums for a single, lifetime-access payment of $650.

For more information about the AOP Signature Course, please visit the Signature Course page here!

The AOP Continuing Education Membership is an optional add-on subscription membership ($25/month) that includes bi-monthly Topic Studies, live monthly Q&A calls on Zoom, and membership with other AOP students in the Adventure of Painting Community. 

If you’re looking to join an in-person workshop or event, the AOP Continuing Education Membership is a prerequisite so we’re all speaking the same “language” and can get to the fun stuff during our in-person time together.

You must have enrolled in the AOP Signature Course in order to also join the membership, and you can do so any time after you’ve purchased the course.

Click here for more information about the AOP Continuing Education membership.

AOP: Refining Your Process is a self-paced, online course that is a continuation of and deeper dive into Signature Course concepts. This course includes over 70 additional videos, each with a corresponding assignment, organized into topics such as Materials, Mediums, & Setup, Adventure & the Painter’s Mind, Composition, Value, Form & Elements in Nature, Orchestration, and more.

Artists wanting a deeper look at the topics we build upon in the Signature Course will enjoy this one.

I highly recommend going through the content in the Signature Course before diving into “Refining Your Process.”

More information can be found on the AOP: Refining Your Process page here.

Painting the Last 10% is an online, self-paced series of 15 videos, ranging from 5-30 minutes (with one at just about an hour). In these videos, I work through painting the last 10% of several of my works, explaining my thought process as I paint.

Unlike the Signature Course and Refining Your Process, I’m at the easel for all of the videos in Painting the Last 10%.

Painting the Last 10% can be considered a standalone course, but I recommend going through the Signature Course and Refining Your Process first so the language I’m using is familiar.

More information about Painting the Last 10% can be found here.

Artists of all levels are welcome inside the AOP Signature Course. Instead of being a “beginner’s” course or an “advanced” course, the Signature Course invites you to see the foundations of painting in a new light, and to deepen your understanding with each pass. 

After all, good lines, interesting shapes and harmonies, colors that tie together—these things aren’t elementary. The adventure of learning and study is a lifetime journey for all artists, and we practice these elements in every painting we work on. 

While I primarily paint and teach in oil and gouache, the concepts we’ll work through can easily be applied to acrylic, watercolor, pastels, and more.

A full supply list is available by email and in your course portal after you enroll, but the contents probably won’t surprise you. I share recommendations for brushes and a foundational color palette, as well as a few different notebooks for writing, drawing, and painting.

You’ll also need your computer, tablet, or phone, and internet or cell service to watch the videos.

If you’d like to browse some of my recommendations in advance, check out the Supplies page here.

I use an Apple Pencil and the built-in Markup tool on the iPad.

Showing you how to paint one painting only shows you how to paint one painting, which is why the AOP Signature Course is not a start to finish demo. 

Instead, there’s a series of modules that let you experiment with each concept independently. You'll learn to see your work through multiple lenses—value, massing, key, color—and how to apply these tools to any painting challenge. That way, you can always dip back into specific topics as needed, no matter what you’re working on. Rather than just following along, you’ll be developing your painter’s mind as you go.

Absolutely. All of the concepts in the Signature Course apply to any landscape you’d like to paint. Concepts like composition, massing, values, key, color, edges, and more apply no matter what you’re painting.

There is no one best way to paint a painting. This course isn't about teaching you to paint in my style, but about building your skills to express your own ideas confidently. We explore how to identify what makes you excited about a painting or a scene, and then translate that aliveness into your work. The real challenge—and reward—lies in honing your eye and developing your own vision.

Throughout the year, I host various online and in-person opportunities to study with me, and AOP Continuing Education members get exclusive access to these invitations. These can include multi-day painting workshops at my studio in Idaho, live online courses on particular topics, mentorship calls, and more. These events are typically limited to 10 participants and are a great way to develop your skills even further through personal instruction and feedback.

Thanks for joining me, and I’m so glad to see you back here! The in-person learning experience is so valuable, but the AOP Signature Course covers so much more than we could ever explore in the few days we had together. Joining the course is a great way to continue your learning and gives you lifetime access to revisit the content again and again.