Art Classes, Workshops and Events in Richardson, TX
Richardson is home. The Art Be You studio is here, the weekly classes meet here, and most of our students live here or in the neighborhoods that touch the city. If you are looking for art classes in Richardson, TX, you do not have to drive across the metroplex to find them. They are already in your city, in a small working studio led by a professional painter.
Art Be You is run by Bartosz Beda, a painter with an international exhibition record who has taught adults, seniors, and children for years. The Richardson studio is where the teaching started, and it is still where most of it happens. This page covers what we offer Richardson residents, the art life of the city around the studio, and how to reach us.
Painting Classes for Adults in Richardson
The heart of Art Be You is two weekly evening courses. Both meet at the studio from 6 to 9 PM, both keep groups small at four to six students, and both include every material. You bring nothing. The easels, paints, brushes, canvases, and paper are waiting when you arrive.
The acrylic painting course meets on Tuesday evenings. Acrylic is a forgiving first medium. It dries fast, corrects easily, and lets a beginner finish a real painting in a single evening. Students work on canvas through still life, landscape, and subjects of their own choosing, and the teacher paints alongside them, showing each step on a canvas of his own before students try it.
The watercolor painting course meets on Thursday evenings. Watercolor is the quieter medium and the harder one to control, which is why it is taught in small steps: how much water the brush holds, how a wash dries, how to leave the white of the paper working as light. Students build from simple studies to finished paintings over a session.
Neither course follows a fixed week by week script. The teacher reads the group in the room and sets the pace from the students in front of him. A person who has never held a brush gets more demonstration. A returning student gets harder problems. This is how the classes have run since they filled up, and Richardson students seem to like it that way, because most seats are taken by people who come back session after session.
If you are choosing between the two mediums, our art classes overview explains both in one place. If you are brand new to painting, read about your first painting class before you enroll. It describes exactly what the first evening feels like.
Workshops That Come to You in Richardson
Not everyone can come to the studio, so the studio also goes out. Richardson workshops run about ninety minutes, and the teacher brings everything: paints, brushes, canvases or paper, table covers, and printed instructions. Setup takes about half an hour, cleanup is handled, and every participant leaves with a finished painting.
Senior communities in Richardson book these workshops for their residents. The canvases arrive with the drawing already sketched on them, so nobody has to face a blank canvas or worry about drawing skills. Residents paint, talk, and sign their work at the end, and the paintings go up on apartment doors all over the building in the days that follow.
Corporate teams are the other Richardson regular. The city is the heart of the Telecom Corridor, and its offices are full of teams who spend their days on screens. A painting event gives them ninety minutes of working with their hands, and companies book it for holiday parties, appreciation days, and team building. The full offer is on the art workshops page.
Private and small group lessons are also possible at the studio for Richardson residents who want one on one teaching or have a schedule that cannot meet the evening courses.
Richardson and the Arts
Richardson is known for technology, but the city has a real art life, and students at the studio use it. These are the places we point them to.
Charles W. Eisemann Center for Performing Arts. The city’s cultural landmark stands at 2351 Performance Drive in the Galatyn Park Urban Center, a short drive from the studio. It opened in September 2002 and holds the 1,563 seat Hill Performance Hall, a smaller theatre, and the Forrest and Virginia Green Mezzanine Gallery, where visual art exhibitions hang in the mezzanine. The ticket office and gallery are open Monday to Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM. Concerts, theatre, and dance run through the year, and the gallery is free to walk through. eisemanncenter.com
Cottonwood Art Festival. Richardson has hosted this festival in Cottonwood Park since 1969, which makes it one of the longest running art festivals in Texas. It runs twice a year, in spring and in fall, with juried artists from across the country. For a painting student, walking the festival is an education in what working artists actually make and sell. City of Richardson
Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival. Each May, Galatyn Park fills for three days of music and art. It has run since the early 1990s and is the city’s biggest weekend of the year. Students who want to see how art and a city celebration fit together should go once.
The University of Texas at Dallas. UT Dallas sits on the Richardson side of the city and gives it a second art center. The Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building holds galleries with rotating exhibitions of contemporary work, and the university’s art programs bring visiting artists and lectures through the year. Exhibitions are generally free and open during weekday hours in the academic term.
Crow Museum of Asian Art at UT Dallas. The Crow Museum, whose main galleries are in the Dallas Arts District, also has a museum on the UT Dallas campus in Richardson, at the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building. It shows Asian art from ancient objects to contemporary work, admission is free, and the galleries are open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 AM to 5 PM. For a city of Richardson’s size, having a museum of this quality inside it is unusual, and our students are lucky to have it ten minutes away.
Richardson Public Library and the art societies. The library at Civic Center Drive hosts exhibitions and talks through the year, and local groups such as the Richardson Civic Art Society run member shows and meetings for residents who paint. A student who wants more art in the week than one class can find it in this city without driving to Dallas.
A Short History of Richardson
Settlers from Tennessee and Kentucky arrived in this area in the 1840s, part of the Peters Colony settlement of North Texas. Their village, called Breckinridge, stood near the present site of Richland College. The town that became Richardson exists because of a railroad decision. In 1873 the Houston and Texas Central Railway built its line a short distance from Breckinridge, and the residents moved to the tracks. Land for the townsite was donated that year, and the new town was named for A. S. Richardson, secretary of the railroad company. Richardson was chartered in 1873 and incorporated in 1925, when it was still a small farming town of a few hundred people.
The interurban electric railway connected Richardson to Dallas and points north and south from 1908, and the town grew slowly until the 1950s. Then two things arrived: Texas Instruments opened its Dallas campus on Richardson’s southern border in 1956, and the postwar suburbs began filling the farmland. Through the 1980s and 1990s, telecommunications companies clustered along the Central Expressway corridor, and Richardson became the Telecom Corridor, a name it still carries. More than 500 technology companies are based here, over 80,000 people commute in to work each day, and the resident population is more than 115,000.
That history explains the city our students live in. Richardson is a working city of engineers, teachers, and families from all over the world, drawn here by the tech industry and the schools. It is not a tourist town, and its art life is the practical kind: a strong performing arts center, two long running festivals, a research university with real galleries, and small studios like ours teaching in the evenings.
Getting to the Studio
Because the studio is in Richardson, this is the shortest trip of any city we serve. Most Richardson students are five to fifteen minutes away, depending on the neighborhood. The studio is reached easily from US 75, the Central Expressway, and from the President George Bush Turnpike across the north side of the city.
Drivers coming from the south of the city usually take Central Expressway or Greenville Avenue. Students from the northern neighborhoods come down Campbell Road or Renner Road. Parking is simple and free, which matters more than people expect when they are carrying a wet painting to the car at 9 PM.
DART light rail serves Richardson at the Arapaho Center and Galatyn Park stations on the Red and Orange lines, for students who prefer the train. The Eisemann Center sits next to the Galatyn Park station, so a class evening and a concert can share one trip.
Questions Richardson Students Ask
I have never painted. Can I join?
Yes. Most students start with no experience at all. The first sessions are built for beginners, the materials are included, and the group is small enough that the teacher can guide your painting directly.
Do I need to buy supplies first?
No. Everything is provided at the studio: paints, brushes, canvas or paper, and an easel to work on. If you later want your own supplies for home practice, the teacher will tell you what is worth buying and what is not.
What if I cannot draw?
Drawing is not a requirement for either course. In the acrylic course you will learn to build a painting from shapes and tones. In workshops, the drawing arrives already sketched on the canvas.
Can I give a class to someone in Richardson as a gift?
Yes. A gift art class covers a full session, and the person receiving it picks the course and the session that fits their schedule.
Where else does Art Be You teach?
Everywhere on our Where We Teach page. The closest neighbors with their own pages are Dallas, Plano, and Garland, and the workshop programs travel across Texas and the states around it.
Start Painting in Richardson
If you live in Richardson and have been meaning to paint, the studio is already in your city and the first step is small. Choose the acrylic painting course for Tuesday evenings or the watercolor painting course for Thursday evenings, and check the current session on the class page.
You can also read the studio’s writing before you decide. How to choose a painting class walks through the questions worth asking any school, including ours. Follow the studio on Instagram and Facebook to see what current students are painting.