Painting camps for 2026

What do students learn in painting camp?

Many new creative opportunities await children enrolled in painting camp! Young painters learn fundamental painting and visual art skills like composition, brushwork, blending, and colour theory. Artistic freedom follows, as kids at advanced levels work with more sophisticated paint types such as oil paints. 

Painting camps are a great way to enhance kids’ artistic skills, including illustration. Children learn about line, form, and subject portrayal. As classes and children’s skills progress, kids adopt a process that helps them create pieces of art they enjoy. Camps may also teach about art history, including great painters, painting techniques, and art of the past. 

Virtual camps and in-person programs are also available. Virtual camps are typically for beginners, as students follow step-by-step instructions to complete their painting. In-person day camps offer more advanced lessons. Prices for weekly lessons average around $45, while more intensive camps can rise to, approximately, $250. Preparatory courses are more of an investment as they typically exceed $1,000 for the total semester.

Painting camps are led by experienced teachers that guide students through every step of the creative process. Camps will include material on mixing colours, as well as brush and tool maintenance. Learning these skills makes painting more accessible from home.

In more advanced painting camps, kids prepare portfolio material. Campers work one-on-one with their instructor to create pieces that showcase their painting range. They also receive training for art school interviews, in which they discuss their personal art style, why they love painting, and what their creative process is. Portfolio preparation for careers in art design, animation, and magazine illustration are available.

Why go to painting camp?

Painting camps nurture kids’ and teens’ growth in technique and ability. Some other benefits students gain from paint camps are:

• Mental health benefits. Painting is a calming activity that provides kids with a medium to communicate emotions through colour and composition. As such, many kids discover that it offers relief from stress and worries. 
• Independent learning. Painting is a solitary activity that encourages children to make artistic choices and solve problems on their own.
• Develops motor skills. Fine brushwork isn’t easy to master, and it’s one of a number of ways that guided painting activities help kids strengthen their fine motor skills.
• Nature plays an important role in painting camps, as children often create paintings of natural landscapes and wildlife. Children use their perception of the natural world and apply it to their paintings. In some cases, painting classes are even held outdoors! Closeness to nature is also known to have positive mental health effects.
• Math skills. Kids learn about measurement, shapes, and patterns during painting activities, which helps with math subjects such as geometry and algebra.

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