KENN BACKHAUS
STUDY TO STUDIO

Kenn Backhaus
MENTORING MEMBERSHIP

$895 USD PER YEAR
(Billed annually, renews once per year)
or
$85 USD PER MONTH
(Month-to-month, cancel/pause anytime)

ENROLLMENT OPENS
MARCH 10, 2026
(Be First in Line — Reserve Your Spot)

WHAT’S INSIDE

This membership gives you full access to Kenn Backhaus’s “Study to Studio” course experience, along with ongoing mentoring designed to help you strengthen your foundation, refine your process, and develop paintings built on clarity, structure, and intention.

The focus is not simply on finishing a painting. It’s on understanding how a painting is built.

As artists, we often chase the final result. We want the painting to look resolved, powerful, complete. But when the foundation isn’t solid—when value isn’t organized, when design isn’t intentional, when light and atmosphere aren’t clearly understood—the work begins to fall apart. Details can’t fix what structure never supported.

Inside this membership, Kenn walks you through the journey that happens before the finish. From developing a thoughtful study to organizing strong compositional design, you’ll learn how to translate inspiration—whether from life or from a photograph—into a painting that carries depth, mood, and narrative.

You’ll see how atmosphere shapes emotion, how light creates form, and how composition guides the viewer through the scene. Instead of reacting to the canvas, you’ll learn to plan it. Instead of guessing at color, you’ll understand how value gives it strength. Instead of overworking passages, you’ll build clarity from the beginning.

Great paintings are crafted with care. They begin with observation, are strengthened through thoughtful decisions in the studio, and are refined with intention. This course shows you how to move through that entire process with purpose—so each painting becomes a culmination of deliberate choices rather than trial and error.

There is no fixed timeline. You can revisit lessons, deepen your understanding, and continue refining your approach as you grow.

Your access to Kenn’s mentoring and course material continues as long as you remain an active member through a yearly or monthly membership option.

By embracing the process—not just the outcome—you gain the tools and confidence to approach every canvas with clarity, discipline, and creative strength.

MODULE 1 | DEVELOPING THE STUDY

The study has many important factors and plays a major role in exploring the path to the final studio painting. The study can take form either painting from direct observation or photo reference gathered from your on-location experiences. You can think of it in comparison to the importance of a screenplay, where a writer has written an “idea” to which eventual a full featured movie will be produced. The “idea” for the eventual studio painting will be better derived from well thought out and explored studies. Just as a movie has a main character and supporting characters, you too will need to develop what would be considered, a main element and supporting elements within the pictorial. Through demonstration I will show you how all these elements can work in harmony to carry out your “idea". I will enlist good habits for you to follow in exploring the “idea”. These habits directed toward developing your studies will result in more successful studio paintings.

MODULE 2 | CONSIDER YOUR OPTIONS

Running with your first idea will work, but those who explore various options will sometimes discover some great possibilities. I will help you understand the role of options and show you some of mine that I consider while developing my studies. Your primary goal will be to develop the strongest studio painting that is possible all resulting from the efforts you put into the various stages of your studies. You will grasp and understand the idea and leave no rocks unturned!

MODULE 3 | IDEAS, KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL

This is it. Time to put it all together. It’s show time baby! You have been inspired from life’s experiences which will result in your ideas. Developed knowledge of your subject, light affects, your use of the medium and tools translate to skills. Harnessing your ideas with your knowledge and skills will result in success.  I will explain the importance and empower you as the director. Everything will be in your control! You will achieve harmony in your studio paintings through your better understanding and use of the historic principles of good draftsmanship, proper use of value, color mixing and competent brushwork.

MODULE 4 | BUILDING YOUR CONFIDENCE

The term, happenstance can occur to any artist which could result in a great painting at anytime. Although the ability to produce a great painting on a consistent basis will be our goal. I will demonstrate how you too can replace the occasional happenstance with development, use of good habits and artistic skills. Developing your abilities through exercises that will reveal your weaknesses and make you aware of your strengths. Together we will build on those strengths and overcome your weaknesses.  The results will be increased confidence so you can produce a quality studio painting every time. 

SUGGESTED SUPPLY LIST

{Although KENN has a preference for oil paint, he is happy to help students explore and work with their preferred medium, whether it's acrylics, gouache, pastels, or watercolors.}

BONUS | REFLECTIONS

Only students in this course receive this special bonus video - it’s not available for purchase anywhere.

In this 120 minute start-to-finish painting demonstration you’ll learn Kenn's step-by-step technique for painting atmosphere, light, and water reflections. Watch and learn as he shows you how he captures the genuine feel of this calming wilderness scene. A great addition to this course.

You can download and save this video in a safe place. It's yours to keep as a takeaway when your course access ends. 

BONUS | GUIDELINES AND WORDS TO PAINT BY

Only students in this course receive this special e-book - it’s not available for purchase anywhere.

A 27 page e-book to develop your creativity and skill set as an artist. It is full of excellent resources to help guide you when you need it most. Downloadable and ready to read anytime on a computer or mobile device. You can even print it if you wish.

You can save this e-book in a safe place. It's your second bonus to keep as a takeaway when your course access ends. 

WHAT’S INCLUDED

Whether you’re an intermediate artist working to improve your skills or a more advanced student aiming to refine your studio work, this course provides the tools and guidance you need to take your work to the next level. It’s focused, practical, and designed to help you achieve measurable progress in your artistic journey.

• Ongoing Mentoring with Kenn Backhaus

  This is not a short-term workshop or a one-off class. Mentoring is delivered through an ongoing membership, giving you continued access to Kenn’s teaching, demonstrations, and disciplined approach to building a painting from study to studio. Many painters experience the same frustrations: the painting starts strong but loses clarity halfway through, color becomes muddy, the focal point competes with everything else, or detail is added before the foundation is truly working.
  
  Kenn teaches that most of these problems are not detail problems — they are foundation problems. If the design is strong, the value structure is correct, and temperature relationships are organized, the painting will read. When those elements are weak, no amount of added information will rescue it.
  
  This mentorship exists to help you think clearly from the beginning, establish the large puzzle shapes first, organize the foreground, middle distance, and distance, and make deliberate decisions rather than reactive ones. Painting is a series of challenges and corrections, and the goal is to reduce the corrections by strengthening the thinking.
  

• Learn at Your Own Pace

  All instruction is delivered through professionally recorded videos, allowing you to learn when and where it suits you. Watch lessons on your own schedule, pause and revisit palette breakdowns, and return to demonstrations as your understanding deepens.

  Painting improves through repetition and thoughtful observation, and your access remains active as long as your membership remains active, so growth can unfold naturally alongside your studio practice.
  

• Over-the-Shoulder Demonstrations

  You’ll gain access to more than 20 hours of in-depth oil painting demonstrations. You will see not only what Kenn paints but how he thinks through problems in real time. You will watch him establish a middle value so lights and darks can be judged accurately, build strong shadow shapes first to set up design, and assign value before assigning color. You will see how temperature shifts are adjusted between sunlight and ambient light, how aerial perspective is used to push elements back, and how edge quality determines whether something advances or recedes. When a passage becomes too strong or begins competing with the focal point, you will see how it is reduced. When color breaks harmony, you will see how gray is introduced to restore balance.
  
  These demonstrations focus on solving the common issues that cause paintings to lose strength — not through tricks, but through principle. Each module includes assignments and reference material to help you apply what you’re learning in a clear, practical way.
  

• Ongoing Additions & Growing Library

  As a member, you gain access to an expanding library of lessons and recorded material. New content is added periodically, and all previously released material remains available to you while you’re enrolled.

  This growing archive allows you to explore topics over time and revisit concepts as your understanding deepens.
  

• A Private, Focused Community — No Social Media

  We’ve moved away from Facebook and built a private, purpose-designed community directly within your account. This distraction-free space is created specifically for artists—no algorithms, no noise, no social media fatigue.

  Here, you’ll connect with Kenn and fellow members, share your work, ask questions, and engage in thoughtful discussion focused entirely on painting and growth.
  

• Community Guidance Led by Kenn

  As part of the membership, you gain insight into how an experienced painter thinks about design strength, value relationships, temperature control, edge management, and the creation of an illusion. Light itself cannot be painted — only the effect of light on form. By strengthening your understanding of design, value, temperature, and edge, you strengthen that illusion.

  The goal isn’t simply feedback on individual paintings. It’s direct access, figuring out with Kenn why something isn’t working. Kenn will equip you with the ability to see what is wrong, understand why it is wrong, and correct it with confidence.
  

• AI-Powered Course Search

  The course includes an AI-powered search tool built entirely from Kenn’s own videos and teaching content. Ask a question, and the system instantly locates the exact moment in the course where that topic is discussed.

  You can watch the video or read the transcript—saving time and helping you get straight to the information you need, when you need it.
  

• Extensive Archive of Past Critiques

  Members also receive access to a deep archive of recorded student critiques and teaching sessions. These include real student work, detailed analysis, and practical solutions to common painting challenges regardless of the medium.

  Watching Kenn diagnose and correct issues in real time— you begin to recognize these issues in your own paintings before they become major problems. The emphasis is always on building correctly from the beginning, so the painting carries strength even before detail is added.

DISCOVER WHY THIS COURSE IS DIFFERENT!

Many painting courses offer short-term instruction with an expiration date, often focusing on surface technique or quick results. This mentoring membership is built instead on steady, long-term development rooted in principle. Kenn teaches that paintings fail or succeed based on foundation — strong design, correct value relationships, organized temperature, controlled edges, and color harmony working together. Rather than chasing effects, you learn how to construct a painting so it carries strength even before detail is added.

Kenn’s approach is disciplined and deliberate. He emphasizes establishing a clear value structure before assigning color, developing the large puzzle shapes first, and organizing the painting into foreground, middle distance, distance, and sky so depth is believable. You learn to control temperature shifts between sunlight and ambient light so passages feel natural rather than mechanical. Color is never applied instinctively; it is compared constantly against surrounding values and temperatures to maintain harmony.

You learn to slow down, evaluate, and correct at the foundational level. You begin to recognize when too many elements compete, when chroma is too strong, when edges flatten space, or when harmony is broken. By strengthening design and value first, many problems are prevented before they begin, keeping the painting fresh and structurally sound.

Because this is membership-based mentoring, you are not rushed to complete lessons before access disappears. You can revisit demonstrations, study how adjustments are made, and deepen your understanding of design, value, temperature, and edge over time. Growth in painting does not happen overnight; it develops through repetition, observation, and disciplined practice. Your access continues for as long as you remain an active member, allowing your progress to unfold at your own pace.

This is mentoring for painters who want lasting improvement — painters who want to build strong foundations, create convincing illusions of light, and develop harmony, clarity, and control that carry through every stage of a painting.

Kenn Backhaus
MENTORING MEMBERSHIP

$895 USD PER YEAR
(Billed annually, renews once per year)
or
$85 USD PER MONTH
(Month-to-month, cancel/pause anytime)

ENROLLMENT OPENS
MARCH 10, 2026
(Be First in Line — Reserve Your Spot)