The Joy of Collage Making -

Shopping List

• Golden Fluid Acrylics: the color Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold. This is a fantastic, very highly pigmented fluid acrylic paint. It’s very translucent and gives a beautiful warm atmosphere on your paintings. Of course, you can choose another type of yellow. But make sure it is transparent since that’s very important in this course.

• Student or professional grade heavy body acrylics. Heavy body means that the paint is not liquid like the fluid acrylics above, but has a more buttery or cream-like consistency. There are many brands of student grade paints. In this course, I work with Amsterdam Acrylics, but you can check out for yourself which brand of paint you like the best. Of course, working with professional paints might be even more satisfying than working with student grade paints, but it’s also more expensive. For this course, it’s not necessary to buy professional grade paints except for the golden fluid acrylics. In this course, I use Quinacridone Rose, Green Turquoise, Titanium White, and Oxide Black. Also, I use Quinacridone Rose Light for reasons of convenience—I don’t have to mix it with white while I’m working on a collage, but it has the same pigments as the Quinacridone Rose, so you can easily mix it yourself.

• Caran d’Ache Neocolor II watersoluble crayons. These are very highly pigmented professional grade crayons. In this course, I mostly use the colors Black, White, Green Turquoise, and Ruby Red. You don’t need to buy a whole box of the crayons—you can buy them separately, which is much cheaper.

• Molotov ONE4ALL Acrylic markers. I love these markers. Contrary to the Neocolor Crayons that make for rough, natural lines, these markers give very clear and sharp lines. In this course, I use the black and white ones, in 2 and 4 mm. After a while, they dry out and need to be replaced.

• Matte medium. I use it for gluing scraps onto the substrate. Also, I use it on top of my collages as a protective layer. Matte medium dries completely transparent; you don’t see it anymore once it’s dry, so you don’t need to be careful if you happen to spill something. I use a Dutch brand (Van Beek), but you can also buy Golden Matte Medium, or any other brand.

• Spray paint. I love to use spray paint since it gives such wonderful little drops on your painting. If you make small collages, these tiny drops can look spectacular. There is one drawback: the spray paint bottle tends to clog very easily, which has caused me lots of frustration. Another annoying thing is that the spray paint tends to dry very slowly, much slower than other acrylic paints. This long waiting time is certainly worth it, though! I use white spray paint from the brand Amsterdam.

• A fineliner. I love to work with fineliners! They make for very delicate details, especially in small collages. You can use them in all sizes. I use Uni Pin Fine Line, 0,1 mm.

• A mechanical pencil.  While a fineliner gives pure black lines, a mechanical pencil creates a very thin, grey line. Beautiful for small collages.

• India Ink. You can create beautiful lines that have a lot of ‘personality’ with this ink and an ink pen. When you turn your ink pen around and around, you can create very large and rough lines. Also, India Ink is fantastic for ‘splashing’: the small black drops look very appealing, especially against a white background. It’s wise to use waterproof Indian Ink; otherwise, it might bleed through the top layer of acrylic paint.

• Foam brushes. I use these brushes all the time: they are relatively cheap, you can wash them out very easily, and they make beautiful strokes. You can buy them in different widths. The ones I used in this course are 2 and 3 cm in width, and you can also buy foam brushes that are 8 cm in width.

• A foam roller. You can buy foam rollers in the hardware store. They are cheap, and perfect for painting large surfaces. But what I especially love about the foam roller is its ability to apply very thin layers of opaque paint (I often ustitanium white), which gives a beautiful veiling effect.

• A sharp knife. I love to carve in the wet paint of my collages with something sharp, for instance a Stanley knife. Also, I use sharp things like screws for scratching and carving.