Unstill Life: Contemporary Painting Practices

This 5-day intensive painting workshop explores contemporary approaches to still life, encouraging students to develop a personal visual language through composition, juxtaposition, the narrative of the everyday. Working with a limited palette and a small selection of items, students will investigate how ordinary materials and familiar forms can become subjects for experimentation, storytelling, and expression.

Moving away from strict academic exactitude, the course considers how artists from Romanticism to Surrealism used still life to express internal moods, political subtexts, symbolism, and subconscious anxieties, moving beyond purely optical realism to explore more personal and psychological forms of meaning.

Students will work with arrangements of ordinary and imperfect objects, including personal and found items such as hair ties and takeaway containers, bringing a diaristic quality to the traditional genre. Painting on found materials (substrates) is also encouraged.

Over five days, students will investigate line and tone, colour, overlay and repetition, scale, and addition and subtraction. The workshop includes technical demonstrations, daily group discussions, and constructive critiques.

This course is suitable for students with a basic understanding of paint handling and extend those with prior experience.

At the completion of the program, students will have greater confidence in developing a personal visual language, creating compelling compositions from every day and found objects, and applying colour, tone, scale, repetition, and layering to communicate ideas. They will also gain a broader understanding of contemporary still-life painting and the ability to discuss and evaluate their work through critique and reflection.

Course Schedule:
The following is an indicative course schedule only. The content and pace of the sessions may vary in response to the students in the program.

Day 1 – Line and Tone
Introduction in the NAS studio, including materials overview and lecturer demonstration. Composition, arrangement- using a visual diary. Exercise in description and translation to address narrative. Introduce mark making and create two works exploring Line and Tone.

Day 2 – Colour
Exercises in colour mixing and colour relationships to explore the expressive language of colour.

Day 3 – Overlay and repetition
Mark making and performative gesture, language of objects.

Day 4 - Scale
Explore changes in meaning through scale.

Day 5 – Addition and Subtraction
What to keep and what to discard, juxtaposition of text.
Group discussion of the week - look at the body of work created over the 5 days.

* Short courses are open to students of ages 16 years and over.

* Drawing and painting short courses may be held in upstairs studios. If access to stairs is not suitable, please contact us at short.courses@nas.edu.au 

* What to bring? Please refer to the list of required materials in the Art Materials field below. 

Students must supply their own art materials, please refer to the list below.

Acrylic Paints/ Watercolour

• Titanium White
• Ivory Black
• Red: Cadmium Red Medium or Pyrrole Red
• Yellow: Cadmium Yellow Light or Hansa Yellow
• Blue: Ultramarine Blue or Cobalt Blu
• 50ml bottle of Atelier Clear painting medium or Matisse Painting medium

Paper

• We will be using heavy, 300-400 gsm watercolour paper with at least 50% cotton content. Please bring the sheets in the weekly list (below) and a watercolour A3 sketchpad.
• Sizes:
  Day 1- 2 X A2
  Day 2- 4 x A3
  Day 3- Found material- sheet, cardboard, etc.
  Day 4-1 x A2m 1 x A3 1 XA4
  Day 5- You choose size and substrate.

Miscellaneous Materials

• A sturdy board: Plywood or wooden drawing board, A3 size, (avoid smooth plastic or waxed surfaces).
• Water-activated gummed brown paper tape: Not regular scotch or painter's tape.
• Clean sponges, rags and paper towel.
• Flat wood or plastic palette or disposable palette
• 1 lead 2B pencil and sharpener
• Sketchbook A5 size or larger for notes and planning
• 2-3cm thick Masking tape
• 2x Bulldog clips
• Apron/protective clothing.
• A glass jar for water

Brushes:

• Please bring at least 3 brushes of different shapes and sizes.
  For example:1 flat/wide (6 cm); 1 flat 3 or 4 cm; and round brushes, for example numbers # 6,8 and 10
  

Enclosed footwear is essential in all studios on campus.