Painting With Sean · Tucson, Arizona
Paint your own Monet, start to finish, in one afternoon.
Hands-on impressionist painting seminars led by artist and longtime Tucson art educator Sean Taylor — no experience necessary, just curiosity and a willingness to get a little paint on your fingers.
About the Artist
Sean Taylor
Sean Taylor has been painting since 1989. As a dyslexic child, he struggled with traditional schoolwork but discovered a gift for drawing and painting — a gift that eventually helped fund graduate studies in Uppsala, Sweden. Between 1998 and 2001 he traveled through 27 countries across Europe, working almost entirely in pen-and-ink and watercolor because the materials were light enough to carry in a single bag.
Before Sweden, Sean spent nearly six years as an artist-in-residence, teaching art to elementary students during their school-year intercessions. When his formal teaching career began in 2000, he made a habit of painting alongside his students every time — living proof that even natural ability has to be practiced and studied, not just possessed.
For several years Sean taught "Monet in a Day," a three-plus-hour seminar at Ben Franklin's in Tucson, walking a room full of first-time painters through their own step-by-step copy of a Monet, along with the history of the artist's palette and materials. Now semi-retired from the classroom, Sean is bringing the seminar back to Tucson, alongside a new, more intimate class: Micro Monets.
Sean is also the founder of The Reading Sage, an education blog read by up to two million visitors a year around the world. When he isn't teaching, he takes on a small number of fine-art charcoal portrait commissions each year.
The Seminars
Two ways to paint like an Impressionist
Monet in a Day
$50Everyone in the room paints the same Monet, one guided step at a time. Sean walks you through the composition, the color mixing, and the brushwork, while weaving in the real history behind the painting: how Monet actually built his palette, why the invention of the paint tube changed art forever, and how the Industrial Revolution — of all things — helped spark the Impressionist movement. By the end of the afternoon, you'll have a finished, framable painting in Monet's own style, made entirely by your own hand.
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Micro Monets
TBDAn intimate, more contemplative companion to Monet in a Day. Working on small 5½ x 7 inch panels, students use Sennelier oil pastels — the same French pastels favored by Pablo Picasso — to build a single, jewel-like impressionistic scene: a glimpse of color and light rather than a full landscape. Micro Monets is built for anyone who wants the meditative pleasure of painting without the scale of a full canvas.
A Little Background
From pig bladders to paint tubes: how Impressionism got its color
For most of art history, painting was a studio affair. Pigments had to be ground by hand and mixed with oil right before use, and there was no good way to store leftover paint — the best option artists had was to seal it inside a pig's bladder and puncture it with a tack when they needed more, a method that was messy, wasteful, and impossible to travel with.
That changed in 1841, when the American painter John Goffe Rand, working in London, patented the collapsible metal paint tube. For the first time, pre-mixed paint could be sealed, carried, and kept fresh for weeks. Painters could finally leave the studio behind and paint directly from life, outdoors, in changing light — what the French called painting en plein air. Pierre-Auguste Renoir would later say, in essence, that without paint in tubes there would have been no Monet, no Cézanne, no Impressionism at all.
The timing mattered. The same Industrial Revolution that gave the world factories and railroads also gave chemists new, affordable, industrially manufactured pigments — colors that simply hadn't existed for earlier generations of painters. Portable easels and paint boxes followed soon after. Together, these very unglamorous, very practical inventions are what actually made Impressionism possible: not just a change in taste, but a change in tools.
Monet took full advantage of it. Across his career his palette narrowed to a small, disciplined set of colors he trusted and reused rather than experimenting endlessly. Historians who have studied his paint tubes and letters generally agree on a palette close to this:
By 1886, Monet had dropped black from his palette entirely, preferring to mix his darks from color instead. He also became devoted to cobalt violet later in his career, convinced that the color of open air itself was violet. In the Monet in a Day seminar, this is the exact palette you'll be handed — the same nine tubes, the same discipline, applied to your own canvas.
Where We'll Be Painting
Two Tucson locations under consideration
St. Francis in the Foothills
4625 E River Rd, Tucson, AZ 85718
A naturally landscaped desert campus at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains, with several bright, flexible community spaces built for workshops and classes — from single-day sessions to weekly gatherings. It's an easy, welcoming setting for a few hours of quiet, focused painting with a mountain view.
Catalyst Creative Collective
4500 N Oracle Rd, Tucson Mall, Tucson, AZ 85705
A 14,000-square-foot creative hub inside Tucson Mall, run by the Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance. Catalyst is purpose-built for artists to teach — flexible classroom space, strong Wi-Fi, AV support, and an entire community of working creatives sharing the building around you
Ready to paint?
Save your seat for the next Monet in a Day.
Class size is kept small on purpose. Email Sean directly to reserve a spot or ask which venue the next session will be held at.
Email seansart@hotmail.com
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