MAKE ART NOW!  

Open the door to your creativity  

 

 

 

a workbook by Simone Nijboer 

 

 

  

 

MAKE ART NOW! 

In our society, art-making is often seen as something ‘for the professionals.’ For people who have gone to art school, for people who have ‘real talent.’ For ‘artistic types.’ Not for us, clearly!  This is so untrue! If you look at children, you can see how natural art-making is. Children just love to play with color, with shapes, with lines. They glue, they scratch, they tear, they paint. They simply enjoy the gestures and marks that they make effortlessly with their tools or hands.  When we grow older, we lose touch too easily with our innate creativity. This is such a pity because we lose so much more—our spontaneity, our natural self-trust, our playfulness, and the simple joy of ‘just making something.’  This workbook—or maybe I should call it a ‘playbook’—is specially designed to get you back in touch with your innate playfulness and creativity. It does so by making the barriers to art-making as low as possible. Everybody can join, even if kindergarten was fifty or more years ago, and if you are an experienced artist it can be so much fun to go back to the basics of playing with stuff.  The goal of this workbook is not for you to make perfectly finished paintings—you can make plenty of them later!, but to simply get you started making something. Not having time is no excuse since every assignment only costs you five minutes. Not having money is no excuse either since you can simply start creating with things that are already in your house or that are very low cost, such as scraps of paper, glue, children’s pencils or paint, crayons, cardboard.   I wish you so much fun with this workbook!  

If you have questions or remarks, please drop me a line! 

 

Simone 

 2 

  

YOU WANT TO MAKE ART? 

Congratulations! Making art is a wonderful thing, and it can be fulfilling in so many ways. 

  It can be difficult to simply start though.   Maybe: 

● you don’t have supplies, ● you don’t have time, ● you don't have experience, and/or ● you have high expectations of the results. 

  Maybe there are all kinds of other things in the way.   Because of that, I created this workbook that can help you to start.    

What do you need? 

 All you need are simple things that you probably already have around the house. Think of 

● cardboard, ● (cheap) paint, ● crayons, ● colored pencils, ● regular pencils, ● pens, ● magazine pages, ● newspapers, ● scissors, ● tape, ● glue, and/or ● brushes (I often only use my fingers). 

    

 3 

  

 If you want to buy things especially for these exercises, you could consider buying   

● a bottle of Golden Fluid Acrylics—in some of the examples below I use the color Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold. The warm shade that you can see in the examples below is from this color. I personally love it and use it all the time; 

 ● a few colors of Caran d’Ache Neocolor II watersoluble crayons—I use ochre, orange, 

green turquoise, black, and white in this workbook.     Optionally, you can also collect things that you maybe did not think about as ‘art materials’. For instance:   

● ribbons, ● wool, ● pieces of cloth, ● paperclips, ● toothpicks, ● dental floss, ● band-aids, ● matches, ● plastic, and/or ● cotton wool. 

          

 4 

  

 

How to start? 

  The assignment is very simple.   

1. Find a piece of paper or cardboard stiff enough to be a postcard, and cut it to postcard size. 

2. Clear a small work space and gather up your materials 3. Set a timer for five minutes. 4. Go! Make art on your postcard! 5. Stop—no matter what—after five minutes. 6. Send a digital photo of the card to me. 7. Send the actual postcard to someone as a gift, or send it to yourself, so you can see 

it as the gift to yourself that it is.   Enjoy!       

Why five minutes? 

  The limited time is meant to help you get out of your head. If you have only five minutes the only thing that you can do is make art, and not ‘think about making art.’  Secondly—and this is related to the above, this short period of time is meant to get your out of your perfectionistic mode. Nobody expects you to make perfect art within five minutes. You can feel free to ‘just make something,’ and not worry about the outcome.  Thirdly, working only five minutes gives you the possibility to focus on quantity, instead of quality. You simply can make LOTS of art. And making lots of art will give you lots of possibilities to learn and grow. Quantity breeds quality.      

Why send it to me? 

  Simply because I would love to receive your art! Also, it can be very worthwhile to show your work to somebody. Even if it is to somebody in cyberspace ;-)     

 5 

  

      

 

 

Now: Start! 

    You can just start and jump straight into the process. But, if you need a boost, here I share a few tips that can help you start.     

   

 6 

  

 

1. Collage & thin lines 

  Grab a magazine, cut or tear out pieces of paper that you love because of the colors, the textures, or the lines. Glue them onto your postcard just as you like. Don’t worry about composition. Add lines to taste.  Done!  Example: 

      

   

 7 

  

 

2. Horizontal grid 

  To not get lost in the space on your postcard, you can create a grid. In the example below I made a grid of horizontal lines. Get out your magazines again, tear or cut pieces, and glue them on your postcard. You can also use black paint or black scraps to create contrast.  Done!   Example:  

       

 8 

  

 3. Square grid 

  Another way of dividing the white space is by creating a square grid. Randomly divide the surface in four; it doesn’t need to be centered like I did below—off-centered usually looks more interesting. Add scraps, paint, lines, whatever you like.  Done!   Example:  

       

 9 

  

 4. Free grid 

  You can also divide the surface in a more random way. Get your scraps and/or paint, and glue or paint along! Make use of the contrast between cut and torn scraps, and between black and white. You can add lines and shapes as you like.  Done!   Example:   

       

 10 

  

 5. Black, white, and newspaper 

  You can keep things simple by only using black and white, and, in the case below, newspaper print. Start with random lines, add newspaper scraps, black paint, and shapes, and make some extra marks by creating blots of black paint on the paper.  Done!   Example:  

   

    

 11 

  

 6. Create quarters 

  A fantastic way to start five-minute postcards is by randomly putting paint or collage on a piece of copy paper. No need for beautiful compositions here, just add colors, shapes and lines as you like. Then, fold the paper and cut the paper in four. Add marks with crayon.  Done!   Here you see the piece of copy paper with the random shapes and colours:  

    On the next four pages you will find above the ‘rough’ quarters, and below the finished postcards.     

 12 

  

 Quarter one: 

  Without crayons:  

   With crayons:  

      

 13 

  

 

Quarter two: 

  Without crayons:  

   With crayons:  

     

 14 

  

 

Quarter three: 

  Without crayons:  

   With crayons:  

      

 15 

  

 Quarter four: 

  Without crayons:  

   With crayons:  

    

 16 

  

 7. Expand your materials! 

 Go through your house and find stuff like ribbons, cotton wool, pieces of cloth—anything and everything that catches your eye and inspires you to make art. Find a way of fixing them on your postcard; you can even use your sewing machine! Add paint, collage, and lines to your taste.  Done!   Example:   

     

 17 

  

 

A last word 

    I hope very much this workbook will help you open the door to your creativity, and get your art practice up and running.   Do you have any questions or remarks? Please drop me a line, I would love to hear from you!   Bye, 

   PS: I am looking forward to your postcard! ;-). You can send it to info@simonenijboer.nl        

 

 18