DO YOU WANT TO PAINT - BUT DON'T KNOW HOW TO START?
Check out ArtSchool, and find a wealth of inspiration for your creative adventure
Do you want to paint?
If you're reading this page, your answer is most probably a resounding: 'YES'! You know deep down that you need to create, to paint, to make art!
But there are so many reasons why you don’t:
- you don’t find the time,
- you don’t know how to start,
- and maybe most important: the voice in your head doesn’t shut up!
It doesn’t have to be that way!
There is a way of getting in touch with your innate creativity.
In my online ArtSchool you find lots of inspiration through my three online courses:
- The Joy of Collage Making
- The Art of Now
- Make Art & Change Your Life
Through these courses you can:
- discover a very easy and joyful way of making abstract intuitive art: collage making from your own hand-painted collage-paper.
- the route getting out of your head and into the Now through painting
- find out how making art can heal and change your life.
Do you want to find out? Then join ArtSchool!
The first two weeks are for free, so you can take a look around first.
ArtSchool is for you if:
- You have never painted before, and don’t know how to start
- You have painted realistically, but want to start making abstract art
- You are already making abstract art, but you feel stuck, uninspired or blocked
- You don’t have much time or space to create, and you are looking for ways of incorporating making art in your life.
- You want to establish a regular painting practice, and find it difficult to do that with the way you paint right now.
- You love painting, but you lose your joy in the process because your inner critic is too active
- You want to develop a more personal style that reflects who you are
- You feel that your paintings are stiff and ‘overthought’
- You keep on doubting and second guessing during the painting process
- You want to use your creativity to foster your personal growth and spirituality
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Frequently Asked Questions
I haven’t painted before. Is ArtSchool for me?
Yes. ArtSchool is a perfect place to begin your creative art-making adventure. You don’t need to have any experience in painting.
I already have a lot of painting experience. Is this course for me?
Yes. ArtSchool offers a fresh perspective on the painting process, and it can add a whole new dimension to your current way of art-making.
Next, ArtSchool is all about letting go, exploration, and –last but not least– making a lot of paintings instead of thinking about it. That can be very worthwhile if you have a lot of experience, but feel blocked in any way.
What materials do I need?
You can find a list of materials at the beginning of every course. You can check them out on the different course pages: click on the links to see the course curriculum:
Is ArtSchool in English?
Yes!
What if I’m not happy with ArtSchool?
The first two weeks of ArtSchool are free. In those two weeks, you can find out if you like ArtSchool or not.
What's the price of ArtSchool?
ArtSchool is currently priced $ 47,00 /month. For EU Customers, VAT is added automatically.
How does the membership work?
If you enroll in ArtSchool, you are automatically enrolled in all of the courses. All the courses in ArtSchool will be listed under the ‘my courses’ tab.
The first two weeks are free. One week before the free trial ends, Teachable (the course platform) sends you a message. If you cancel before the free trial ends, you will not be charged.
How do I cancel my subscription?
Go to the ‘Edit Profile’ tab on your school page, then go to the Manage Subscription page. There you’ll find your ArtSchool subscription, including the time of enrollment, and the cancel button (which will cancel your subscription at the end of the current billing cycle).
You cannot change the billing date of an active subscription—your billing cycle is determined by the date you purchased the subscription.
What do I do if I encounter technical problems using the course platform?
If you encounter any technical problems, you can get in contact with the Teachable support desk: support@teachable. com
Also, you can find the student's guides here. There you will find answers to a lot of practical questions.
I have a question that’s not on this list.
Please drop me a line at simone-at-simonenijboer.com, and I’ll be happy to answer all of your questions!
My name is Simone Nijboer
I'm an artist and art teacher, and I live in the Netherlands, together with my husband and my two children of 15 and 17 years old. I live close to the beautiful medieval city of Utrecht, and I love to be outdoors. Preferably trekking and bivouacking in the mountains - but unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of them here in the Netherlands ;-). Luckily, we have beautiful nature in our densely populated country too, and you can often find me there.
Before I turned into a full-time artist, I’ve been a life coach in private practice for about two decades. I’ve always loved my coaching work. I’m deeply interested in personal growth and spiritual deepening, and in my experience, they are inseparable from making art.
A joyful and fulfilling life
Being an artist, I know how fundamental creativity is for living a joyful and fulfilling life. And being a coach, I know how important it is to create from a deep and still place inside of yourself.
The beautiful thing about making art is that it helps you to combine both. It’s wonderful to express yourself in a creative way. And it invites depth and stillness in your life, from where wisdom, truth, and power can emerge.
How I started art-making
My personal art journey is long and winded. For many years, I wanted to paint but did not dare to start. When I had gathered enough courage, I started painting, but dropped it again quite soon, since I had lots of insecurities, doubts, and unhelpful thoughts around painting.
Daily painting
This all changed when I started painting on a more or less daily basis – and loved it! It might sound exaggerated, but I personally feel that daily painting changed my life. Creativity became an indispensable joyful ingredient of my day, and this joy spread over to the rest of my life. In a miraculous way, being in touch with my creativity grew my resilience and resourcefulness, and it strengthened my ability to simply enjoy life instead of staying trapped in negative thinking.
The Joy of Collage Making
When I started making collages, I found it to be so much easier to sustain my daily painting practice, even in busy times. Making collages happened to be a fantastic counterpart to more time-consuming types of painting.
Because I enjoyed the collage-making process so much, I decided to make an online course about it: ‘The Joy of Collage Making’. I wanted to inspire other people like you to start making art on a regular basis and in a very intuitive, easy, and light-hearted way. Collage making is the perfect way to do so.
Freedom
I had always loved the freedom and joy that some paintings seem to radiate. And when I started painting, I knew one thing for sure: I wanted to paint in this free, liberating, and intuitive way. From that moment on, I’ve experimented a lot. I was always focussing in the first place on the joy of the process instead of on the outcome of the paintings.
Of course, I didn’t always manage to paint that way. Often I got stuck, harassed by my inner critic, doubting and second-guessing how to proceed in the middle of an ‘ugly’ painting.
But I realized that in the moments I could paint from this free and liberating place, I felt wonderful. I completely lost time and became one with my paintbrushes and painting.
Spirituality
These moments ‘in the Now’ lifted me up and helped me to develop the same attitude for the rest of my life. Whenever I felt stuck in my life, often painting helped me to get in the flow again. It brought me back to an attitude of trust, in myself and for the rest of my life. Slowly, making art became a kind of spiritual practice for me.
The Art of Now
That’s when I started to create my second course ‘The Art of Now’. I wanted to show how you can learn to experiment, play, and not worry about the outcome. By letting go of expectations, painting becomes a meditative process.
Make Art & Change your Life
More and more, I realized that making art, spirituality and personal growth are interconnected. When you encounter personal issues, your art can help you to break through barriers and get in touch with your natural joyfulness and inner wisdom. That’s why I created the online course ‘Make Art & Change your Life’.
ArtSchool
After I created the three courses
- The Joy of Collage Making
- The Art of Now
- Make Art & Change your Life
I felt that it was time to create my ArtSchool - a membership site for people who want to discover the wonderful world of abstract intuitive painting.
Try it out: two weeks for free
With ArtSchool, I wanted to make my courses available for a larger public, and create the possibility to try my courses out for free. That’s why ArtSchool is free for two weeks.
Join me!
If you would learn to let go, use your intuition, discover artistic freedom and make paintings that you love, join me in making The Art of Now!
Bye!