Art Classes, Workshops and Events in Plano, TX
Plano is the closest big city to our studio that is not our home. From most Plano neighborhoods, the Art Be You studio in Richardson is a ten to twenty minute drive, straight down US 75 or across Campbell Road. Plano students have always been a large part of our evening classes, and this page is written for them: what the classes are, what the workshops offer Plano groups, and where Plano itself feeds a painter’s eye.
The classes are taught by Bartosz Beda, a professional painter with an international exhibition record and years of teaching adults, seniors, and children. Groups stay small, at four to six students. All materials are included in the course. If you are looking for art classes in Plano, TX with real instruction and a real studio, the shortest route leads just south of the city line.
Painting Classes for Plano Adults
Two courses meet each week at the studio, both in the evening from 6 to 9 PM. Plano students finish work, eat something, and still reach the studio without rushing, because the drive is short and runs against the evening traffic.
The acrylic painting course meets on Tuesdays. Students paint on canvas, working through still life, landscape, and subjects they choose themselves. Acrylic dries quickly, so a student can build, correct, and finish areas of a painting inside one evening, and the teacher demonstrates each stage on his own canvas at the front of the room.
The watercolor painting course meets on Thursdays. Watercolor is taught patiently, in stages: loading the brush, judging the water, laying a wash that dries flat, and saving the white paper for the lights. Plano has many engineers and careful thinkers, and they tend to take to watercolor’s planning once someone shows them the logic of it.
Both courses are built around the students in the room, not a printed syllabus. There is no fixed week by week plan that everyone marches through regardless of level. Beginners get foundations. Returning students get harder problems and honest critique. Sessions run through the year in short blocks, and the current dates and open seats are always on the class pages themselves. The art classes overview explains both courses together if you are still deciding between mediums.
Workshops That Come to You in Plano
Plano groups do not have to travel at all. Art Be You workshops run in your building, last about ninety minutes, and include everything: paints, brushes, canvases, table covers, printed instructions, setup, and cleanup. Every participant finishes a painting.
Senior communities are Plano’s most frequent bookers. The city has a large retired population and active senior living communities, and a painting workshop fits their activity calendars well. Canvases arrive pre-sketched, so residents paint without needing to draw. The teacher has run these workshops for years and sets the pace for mixed abilities, including memory care groups.
Corporate teams are the other Plano natural. The Legacy area and the US 75 corridor hold the offices of national companies, and their teams book painting events for holidays, appreciation weeks, and team building. A group of up to thirty paints together for ninety minutes, and the paintings make a better office story than another catered lunch. Details are on the art workshops page.
Private lessons at the studio are also available for Plano residents who want one on one teaching, including students preparing portfolios.
Plano and the Arts
Plano’s art life centers on its historic downtown, and it is better than many residents realize.
ArtCentre of Plano. The city’s art center occupies the historic Saigling House, a restored home in the Downtown Plano Arts District at Haggard Park. It hosts rotating exhibitions of regional artists, receptions, and events through the year. The galleries are open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM, and admission is generally free. For a painting student, it is the closest place to see serious regional work hung properly, a few minutes from home.
Downtown Plano Arts District. The brick streets around 15th Street hold the ArtCentre, the Courtyard Theater, the Cox Playhouse, galleries, and studios within a few walkable blocks. The district runs art walks and festivals during the year, and the DART station drops you in the middle of it. Students looking for subjects to paint find them here: brick storefronts, the old theater signs, evening light on the square.
Interurban Railway Museum. Also downtown, in the restored depot that served the Texas Electric Railway from 1908 to 1948. The museum tells Plano’s early story with photographs and artifacts, and a restored interurban car sits outside. It is open Monday to Friday, 10 AM to 2 PM, and Saturday, 1 PM to 5 PM. Painters who work from photographs will appreciate the archive of old Plano images.
Collin College. The college’s Plano campus (Spring Creek) runs art exhibitions in its galleries and hosts lectures and shows by students and visiting artists during the academic year. Exhibition entry is free, and the shows are a good way for a student to see how art students are trained and what they produce.
Plano Art Association. The city’s long running artist organization holds member exhibitions, demonstrations, and meetings around Plano. For a student who has finished a few sessions and wants a next step, a local art association is where painting stops being a class and starts being a practice.
What Plano Students Paint
Plano is not an obvious painting city, and that is its advantage. It has no mountains, no coast, and no old town square built for tourists. What it has is Texas light on ordinary places, and students who start looking for subjects near home find them quickly once they begin paying attention.
Arbor Hills Nature Preserve, in west Plano off Parker Road, is the favorite. Its trails run through prairie and woodland along a creek, with an observation tower standing over the trees. Students bring photographs from those trails into class through the year, and the preserve in autumn is the closest thing to a landscape season this part of Texas gets. More than one finished class painting started as a phone photograph taken on its paths.
Haggard Park and the downtown streets give the architectural subjects: the brick storefronts along 15th Street, the bandstand, the old interurban car, and shade trees that have stood over the park for decades. Painting brick in sun and shadow is a practical lesson in color temperature, warm light against cool shade, and downtown Plano is full of it within a few blocks.
Oak Point Park, the city’s largest park, adds open sky. Texas landscape painting is mostly sky painting, and the park’s fields, woods, and pond are where Plano students go to study clouds before trying them on canvas in the studio.
Home subjects count too. Plano backyards, with their fences, crepe myrtles, and hard afternoon light, have produced some of the most honest paintings in the class. A subject you see every day teaches observation better than a famous view copied from someone else’s photograph, because you know at once when the painting is lying.
In class these photographs become paintings slowly. A student chooses one image and works it across several evenings, and learns more from finishing one Plano scene than from starting five. Several of our students’ best finished paintings show places within a mile of their own front doors, which surprises them every time.
A Short History of Plano
Settlers reached this part of Collin County in the 1840s, drawn by the Blackland Prairie soil. A sawmill, a gristmill, and stores gathered near the present downtown. When the community applied for a post office in 1852, it took the name Plano, from the Spanish word for flat, a plain description of the land around it.
The Houston and Texas Central Railway arrived in 1872 and made Plano a shipping point for cotton and cattle. The town incorporated in 1873. Fires in the 1880s and 1890s burned much of the early business district, and the brick downtown that stands today rose from those rebuilds, which is why the Arts District has its solid, uniform brick character.
For a century Plano stayed a farming town of a few thousand people. The change came after 1970, when Dallas growth pushed north, Texas Instruments and other employers built campuses along the corridor, and Plano’s population climbed from about 18,000 in 1970 to more than 285,000 today. The Legacy business district in west Plano drew national headquarters, including Toyota’s North American headquarters in 2017, and the city became one of the best known corporate suburbs in the country.
That history shaped the Plano student. The city is full of educated professionals and active retirees with high standards and limited free evenings. They want a class that respects both, taught well, close to home, without a long commitment. That is the class we run just down the road.
Getting to the Studio from Plano
From downtown Plano and the southern neighborhoods, take US 75 south or Greenville Avenue to Richardson; the studio is minutes from the Campbell Road corridor. From east Plano, Parker Road and Renner Road run straight to the city line. From west Plano and Legacy, take the President George Bush Turnpike east or come across Campbell Road. Most Plano students arrive in ten to twenty minutes.
DART’s Red Line serves Plano at the Downtown Plano and Parker Road stations and runs directly to Richardson’s Arapaho Center and Galatyn Park stations, for students who would rather not drive at all.
Parking at the studio is free, with room to carry a canvas to the car without a hike through a garage.
Questions Plano Students Ask
How far is the studio, really?
From most of Plano, ten to twenty minutes. Southern Plano neighborhoods are closest. West Plano students usually take the turnpike or Campbell Road and arrive in about twenty minutes.
I am a complete beginner. Which course should I take?
Acrylic, for most people. It is forgiving, dries fast, and lets you finish work quickly at the start. Watercolor is a wonderful second course once you want more delicacy and planning.
Do I need to bring or buy materials?
No. Paints, brushes, canvas or paper, and easels are all provided at the studio. If you build a home practice later, the teacher will advise you on a short, sensible supply list.
Can our Plano senior community book a single workshop?
Yes. Single visits are the normal booking. Tell us your group size and the room you have, and we bring the rest. Start at the art workshops page.
Is there a gift option for a Plano friend or parent?
Yes. A gift art class covers a full session, and the person receiving it chooses the course and dates that fit them.
Start Painting, Plano
Plano has the arts district, the galleries, and thousands of people who meant to start painting years ago. The studio is ten minutes south, the groups are small, and the first evening is the hardest step only because it is first. Choose the acrylic painting course on Tuesdays or the watercolor painting course on Thursdays.
See the full list of cities on the Where We Teach page, and follow the studio on Instagram and Facebook for student work and workshop visits.