How to get out of a painting slump through playing with found composition

by Simone Nijboer | 27 Jan 2021

Fun with Found Composition

I’ve have been quite busy lately. Therefore, I found it difficult to stay true to my beloved daily painting practice. I felt ‘out of the groove’, and found it difficult to get back in. Today, I want to share something that helped me!

I had been painting a larger painting (50-70 cm, that’s 20-26”), and I didn’t like it. After staring at it for a while, I got the luminous idea of creating a small ‘window’ of 15-15 cm (6-6”) in a piece of copy paper. I used this window to search f or spots on the bigger painting that appealed to me. I cut those out and finished them with blue, black, and white paint. Also, I used white and blue markers.

There were a few things that I liked about using the paper window:

First, I was less frustrated about my ‘spoilt’ painting. Suddenly something ‘ugly’ was only a step towards something that I really liked.

Second, the process of using the window and searching for interesting parts in the painting was fun and felt creative in itself.

Below I’ll show you a small video about the process, and also you’ll find the photo’s of some of the small paintings that I made.

I hope this is useful to you!

Bye!

Below you first see the big painting on the ground, with the ‘window’ on it.

And thereafter you’ll see the smaller paintings.

Video: Collage on a business card #2

by Simone Nijboer | 5 Apr 2018

Dear reader,

A while ago, I made a small collage, on the size of a business card. Today I’ll show you the process. The video is about 6 minutes long.

About half of the collage is made of a scrap of collage paper that I made before. I’ll show an image below. You can learn all about making these collage papers (among other things) in my online course: The Joy of Collage Making

Enjoy!

(If you like the video, please subscribe to my Youtube channel, or share the video or this post! And of course, I would love to hear your comments below! ;-))

Simone Nijboer, Dutch abstract artist, online art teacher, daily painter, creativity accelerator

And here is the final result again: (you can watch the details of the collage if you click on it).

And this is an image of the collage paper that I used. Can you find what part I used? 😉

Video: collage on a business card (3)

by Simone Nijboer | 22 Mar 2018

Dear reader,

A while ago, I made a small collage. Today I’ll show you the process.

Making a collage in a tiny size is fun! It only takes a little bit of time, and the tiny size creates the possibility to give extra attention to the small details. Try it out on the back of an old business card!

Bye!

Simone

ps: the video is about 8 minutes long, and below the video I’ve put an image of the final result (you can watch the details if you click on it).

Video: Collage on a business card (1)

by Simone Nijboer | 15 Mar 2018

Dear readers,

Sometimes, I’m very busy, and then I often think: let’s skip painting, and do some so-called ‘real work’. Maybe you can relate to that ;-)?

But then I remember what I’m ‘preaching’ to others: ‘You can always make something simple on the back of a business card’. And so I took my own advice.

I took out some leftover scraps of a piece of collage paper that I made a while ago. And I took my Molotow marker, fineliner, liquid acrylics, matte medium and crayons.

And I made a small collage. You can watch the process below in the video.

The materials that I used are:

Molotow marker 4 mm, black
Fineliner 0,5 mm, black
Golden Liquid Acrylics Black
Golden Liquid Acrylics Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold
Golden Matte Medium
Caran d’Ache Neocolor II, White
Caran d’Ache Neocolor II, Blue Turquoise

(do you want to download my complete list of favorite materials. Go to the free library, and check it out there!)

Have fun watching!

Simone

My favorite materials (2) Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons

by Simone Nijboer | 8 Mar 2018

My favorite materials (2): Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons

(I created a shopping list of my favorite art supplies. You can download it from the free library!)

(This post contains affiliate links, which means that I earn a small commission if you purchase after using the link. I only write about products that I truly love and use myself. Read everything about them on my disclosure-page).

One of the things I’m always curious about is what kind of materials other artists use. That’s why I’m writing a series of blog posts about my favorite materials. In a previous post, I wrote about my absolute number one: Golden Fluid Acrylics: Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold.

In this post, I will write about my number 2: Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble pastels. I use them all the time, I think in almost every painting or collage that I make.

What do I like so much about the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons?

First, I love the smoothness of the crayons. Especially if you heat them with a hairdryer, they give a very thick and creamy line.

Second, they have beautiful and intense colours. Because they are professional quality crayons, they are very highly pigmented. I only use a few colours though, mostly turquoise, orange, yellow and pink. And black and white, of course. The latter are perfect for creating graphic elements in your work. White marks on a black or dark background create a beautiful contrast. And the same is true for black marks on a white background.

Third, I like the ‘roughness’ of the lines. Contrary to for instance acrylic paint markers which give a very straight and ‘artificial’ line, the crayons give a raw and natural line, which I love.

Fourth, because they are water soluble, you can easily mix them with acrylic paint, contrary to for instance oil crayons. At the same time that can be a disadvantage. For example, if you paint with white paint over a layer of crayon, it picks up the pigments of the crayon, which pollutes the whiteness of the paint. To prevent this, you can cover the crayon lines with matte medium, although this again bears the risk of smearing the crayon. That’s why I usually only use the crayons on top of a painting and cover the final layer with spray varnish, to fixate the crayon lines.

You can buy the crayons in boxes, but I would advise buying only the colours you love or use in your work. Otherwise, you will end up with lots of crayons you don’t use, and not having the crayons you want to use. In my case, the turquoise colour that I like is not included in a very basic box. On this page, you will find a link to a color chart.

(I created a shopping list of my favorite art supplies. You can download it from the free library!)

Have fun using the crayons!

Bye!

Simone

Ps: below I post some examples of how I use the crayons in my work.

Go to the free library to download your checklist of my favorite materials!

Video: Collage on a post card (1)

by Simone Nijboer | 15 Feb 2018

Dear readers,

Collage-making is big fun. I write here about why it is so freeing, and why you can learn so much from it.

In this blog post, I will show you a video of the process of making a postcard-size collage. I used an old business post card of mine and, since the card gets almost completely covered, it doesn’t matter that there is already some text on it. You can use anything as a substrate as long as it is sturdy.

I used scraps of collage paper that I made myself. I’ll show a photo of this piece of paper below the video and a photo of the finished collage, too.

Materials

The materials I used are:

Golden Fluid Acrylics: Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold. This is my absolute favorite art supply ever. I write more about it here.
Amsterdam Acrylic: Titanium White. This is student grade paint that I use all the time.
Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Crayons: Turquoise . These crayons are my second favorite art supply, and Turquoise is a color I use all the time.

(Do you want to get the complete list of my favorite materials? Check out my free library!)

In this video I use simple paper glue, since my Matte Medium was finished and I had not bought another container yet. The beautiful thing about Matte Medium is that it dries transparently, so you can use it as a top layer that protects the collage and keeps it together beautifully.

Have fun watching! And please let me know in the comments about your experience with collage making.

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How to get out of a painting slump through playing with found composition

Fun with Found Composition

Video: Collage on a business card #2

Video: collage on a business card (3)

Video: Collage on a business card (1)

My favorite materials (2) Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons

My favorite materials (2): Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons

What do I like so much about the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons?

Video: Collage on a post card (1)

Materials

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