This is a 6 week course, running on Thursday mornings.

About Greg

Born on the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, I am primarily a self-taught artist who has received considerable help from many artists, especially Robert Hannaford. In 1996, I was appointed Deputy Chair of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts Inc. and I have been a convenor of the RSASA life drawing sketch group which I continue to attend. I paint in oils and am interested in all subject matter including Still life, Portraiture, Landscape, Floral and Figurative.

I have a studio at home in Adelaide and exhibit there regularly, and always during SALA in August. After nearly twenty years of full-time painting and a life-time studying painting, I continue to find great satisfaction in the challenges that have absorbed artists for millennia. Finding the colours, tones, shapes and compositions that convey on canvas the delight that nature generates remains my focus.

Outline
While this course focuses on still life, I have been asked to devote some time to streetscapes if there is interest in them. The interest was prompted by some small paintings I’ve been doing recently. Below are a few ‘footpath perspectives’ and if there is class interest, please let me know.

Weeks 1 and 2 will focus on general issues relating to painting and painting in oils: composition, drawing, colour, value (or tone), edges, perspective, brush use, the role of a focus, selection of subject matter and setting it up, beginning a painting and progressing it, etc. During these two weeks, I suggest you work on small ‘practice paintings’ on cheap canvas or canvas board to ensure that the basics are right.
Weeks 3 and 4 will be taken up with the first painting you wish to work to completion. So think about subject matter, bring it along or a photo of it as the light in the venue is not ideal and varies considerably. The instruction during these weeks will relate the general principles discussed in the first two weeks to the particular paintings being created.
Weeks 5 and 6: For those wishing to move to a second painting there will again be personalised instruction relating the general principles of tone, colour and shapes, etc. to your individual painting. There will also be discussion of enhancing a painting after you first consider it finished.

I’ll provide a series of notes each week after the first class. If you wish to get them, send me an email so I have an address list. The notes will provide further reading, online resources about technical issues and discussions of process issues as well as painters who excel in the genre.

Materials
Paints
Depending on the subject matter, you might limit paint colours to white plus warm and cool primaries, i.e:
Titanium white is useful as an all-purpose white
red (e.g. cadmium red and alizarin crimson),
blue (e.g. ultramarine and cerulean),
and yellow (e.g. cadmium and lemon).
You might also want a warm and cool:
green (e.g. sap green and viridian)
and brown (e.g. burnt sienna and burnt umber).
Specialist colours of high chroma which are difficult to mix may be required at some stage, especially if painting flowers. These colours can simplify and speed up still life and portrait painting.
In the beginning, student quality paints are adequate. Standard small sizes (of around 37 – 40 ml) are OK but a larger size for the white is handy. Professional quality paints are more expensive but they have a higher ratio of pigment to binder etc so they go further.
Palette, solvent, easel, paper towels or rags, brushes from about 0.3cm to 2cm. and some cheap canvases or boards if you wish to ‘practise’ rather than starting something you would like to keep. Choose your own sizes but preferably not less than about 20 x 30 cm. Some protective clothing can prevent misfortune.
It will be helpful to bring your own subject matter, but if that’s not possible, a selection of photos of it.

Contact details
Email: gregoleary20@gmail.com.au
My website is: www.gregoleary.com.au
And I post a painting or drawing once a week on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/gregolearyart
My studio and ‘gallery’ are at 239 Cross Rd Cumberland Pk.