Create a beautiful, luminous beach landscape while learning the fundamentals of pastel painting!

Karen will guide you step by step, beginning with a simple black-and-white study to help you see the landscape in clear shapes and values before moving into color. From there, you’ll explore warm and cool color relationships, build soft transitions in the sky, sand, and water, and use layering and expressive marks to create texture and movement.

As your painting develops, you’ll move from broad shapes into the details that make the landscape feel alive: from distant atmosphere to the directional strokes of foreground grasses.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll leave with a finished coastal landscape, new pastel techniques to take into your own work, and a stronger understanding of how value and color can create mood and light!

Materials: You may bring your own, or borrow CCAC supplies

• Hard and soft pastels in a range of values and colors (NOT oil pastels).
• Pencil/ eraser
• Sanded pastel paper in a light color (cream or white) *There will be 9×12 sheets of U-Art paper available for $4.00 each if you need one.
• *Cheap set of watercolors
• Water dish
• Old, large brush (1 inch) for underpainting
• Backing board for paper, clips or tape to attach paper to board
• Old towel or washcloth for hands and wiping pastels clean
• Simple beach reference photo with sand and dune grasses (Karen will have some choices) Preferably black and white and a color copy if printed or on your phone so we can turn a color copy to black and white.

Karen Peck

Karen Peck is a Carroll County artist and educator whose work explores the expressive color, texture, and immediacy of soft pastel. A lifelong creative, Karen studied art education and spent her career teaching before turning more fully to her own studio practice.

Inspired by landscapes, travel, and the beauty found in everyday surroundings, Karen paints as a way to slow down, observe, and connect more deeply with the world around her. Her work often captures meaningful places and memories, balancing careful technique with a personal, intuitive approach.

For Karen, art is less about simply making an image and more about creating a sense of renewal, peace, and connection for both the artist and the viewer.

When you register for a class or workshop with the Carroll County Arts Council, you’re doing more than signing up to create. Your registration helps us provide competitive and equitable compensation to local and regional teaching artists while creating welcoming, high-quality opportunities for people across Carroll County to learn, connect, and explore their creativity!

Want to help someone else participate?
Pay it forward! Consider making a gift to support arts education and scholarship opportunities. Your generosity helps open the door for more of our neighbors to discover, learn, and create.

Need a little help participating?
Creativity belongs to everyone. Scholarship assistance is available for youth and adult participants, including the Linda Van Hart “HART for Art” Scholarship Fund for adult learners.

Whether you’re registering, giving a little extra, or receiving a little help, you’re part of building a more creative, connected Carroll County!