-
Life Book 2021
Life Book 2021 - Registration Now Open! Come join this popular course which lasts for the entire year! You'll learn wonderful art techniques and how to become a happier person in a huge group of likeminded people! :)
“Life Book, a celebration and honouring of YOU” is a year-long mixed media art class organised by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts. Tam is joined by 30 incredible art teachers & wellness experts who are all gearing up to share their art & wellbeing techniques, tips and tricks with YOU! Themed around self-development and healing, you’ll be creating several loose mixed media art journal pages per month which by the end of the year you will bind into a glorious journal (a Life Book)! You will have a wonderful keepsake that you can treasure for the rest of your life!
-
Life Book 2020
Life Book 2020 - Registration Now Open! Come join this popular course which lasts for the entire year! You'll learn wonderful art techniques and how to become a happier person in a huge group of likeminded people! :)
“Life Book, a celebration and honouring of YOU” is a year-long mixed media art class organised by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts. Tam is joined by 30 incredible art teachers & wellness experts who are all gearing up to share their art & wellbeing techniques, tips and tricks with YOU! Themed around self-development and healing, you’ll be creating several loose mixed media art journal pages per month which by the end of the year you will bind into a glorious journal (a Life Book)! You will have a wonderful keepsake that you can treasure for the rest of your life!
-
Whimsical / Stylised / Folk Art Party Time
Draw a “lollipop girl” who is in “party time” mode!
Draw a “lollipop girl” who is in “party time” mode! -
Winter and Christmas The Willowing Winter Bundle
A Fun Bundle of Wintery Art Classes for the whole family! :-)
A perfect little package of Wintery art classes to keep you and your loved ones creative in the dark evenings this winter. We have put together a selection of customer favourites with a winter theme. Why not give your very own hand made art to a loved one this Holiday Season or gift this class pack to them?
-
Magical and Fairytale Ever After – Full Course with Style Development – Self Study
“Ever After” is a mixed media art & style development course with a fairytale theme hosted by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts.
Tam is joined by 15 popular mixed media art teachers who will all share beautiful fairy-tale inspired lessons with you AND, in style dev segment they will also divulge all their hints and tips on how they developed their own style and how YOU TOO can find your own unique voice as an artist! :) Yay!
-
Floral and Nature Sacred Trees
Create Sacred Trees!
Learn to create your Sacred Trees! -
Magical and Fairytale Goddess Athena
Join Tam to create a beautiful painting of Goddess Athena with her beautiful owl friend. Learn to play with watercolours and pencil.
Let’s make a beautiful painting of Goddess Athena together! :)
-
Animals Quirky Koala
Create a Quirky Koala!
Learn to create a Quirky Koala! :) -
Floral and Nature Queen Bee
Create a delightful ‘Bee Girl’ with her little bee friends!
Learn to create a delightful ‘Bee Girl’ with her little bee friends! -
Magical and Fairytale Angels are Always with You
Create an ‘Angels With You’ painting!
Create an ‘Angels With You’ painting! -
Animals The Largest Heart and Giraffe Love
Create a whimsical giraffe in (mostly) watercolours!
Create a whimsical giraffe in (mostly) watercolours! -
Whimsical / Stylised / Folk Art Happy Houses
Create a series of ‘Happy Houses’!
Learn to create Happy Houses! :)
Products
Creating Cuties
Join Tam in her newest SOLO course and paint a series of super cute cutie pies! 😃 Learn to paint sweet, cute, adorable animal characters full of joy and innocence!
Join Tam in her newest SOLO course and paint a series of super cute cutie pies! 😃 Learn to paint sweet, cute, adorable animal characters full of joy and innocence!
Expressive Soul Portraits
Join Tam in her newest SOLO course and paint a series of Expressive Soul Portraits with her!
Join Tam in her newest SOLO course and paint a series of Expressive Soul Portraits with her!
Mastering Mixed Media – Expo – 2025 – VIP
Purchase your VIP - All Access Pass for Mastering Mixed Media!
Mastering Mixed Media – Expo 2025 is a two-week, online mixed media art event celebrating the joy of creative play, experimentation, and expression. Hosted by renowned artist and author Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts, this event brings together 35+ inspiring mixed media artists from around the world. Together, they’ll share a wide variety of lessons exploring texture, layering, colour, and mixed media magic to spark your creativity and expand your skills. – Life long and downloadable access available for VIP students!
Just leaving this little guy here on my timeline here for your moment of serotonin release. It`s the boy version of the other kitten I did the other day. He has such a sweet quality to him! 😍😍😍 - Make this painting with me? --> https://bit.ly/CreatingCuties (or link in bio/ link tree). ♥️♥️♥️
"Kitty Love & Whimsy" - I ran my very first online art course in early 2009. It was called World of Whimsy, and I think I had around 100 sign-ups, which felt absolutely amazing at the time!
I was pregnant with my first son Dylan and had just left a job in market research to follow this new path. Back then, hardly anyone was running online art classes. Online events with video were still rare. YouTube was just starting to become known, and the idea of watching anything online felt brand new and exciting.
Compare that to how things are now with so many people doing this kind of work! Crazy how things change!
What drew me to running online classes was how they brought together so many of the things I loved and was (sort of) good at: teaching, making art, editing video, Photoshopping, building website. I’ve always enjoyed tech, which is unusual for an artist! Just two years before that, I had been teaching art, music, and drama at a British international school in Sri Lanka. And beyond all that, I loved that I could support people’s mental health through creativity, it was a win-win-win-win-win kind of thing for me haha. 😊
The painting I’m sharing today was the promotional image for World of Whimsy, the course. It has that sweet, quirky charm I loved at the time that helped me so much to get reconnected to that inner child space and heal some of the trauma wounds that were still lingering.
I was enchanted by the idea of a cat-like creature walking its pet mouse on a leash. And if you’re wondering about the words in the background; they’re the lyrics to “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” from The Aristocats. 🐾🎶
This is day 7 of a ‘gentle return to social media’ read more about this practice here: http://bit.ly/3IHFxir 🌱
“I cry glitter.” ✨
A lyrical quote from a song by Antony and the Johnsons (now Anohni and the Johnsons), whose music I was utterly obsessed with; so vulnerable, poetic, and soul-baring. One of my favourites, Bird Guhl, is from their hauntingly beautiful album I Am a Bird Now. Anohni’s is one of my favourites; full of ache, truth, and beauty.
This painting, also titled Bird Guhl, was part of my early Paint Over Collage series published in Somerset Studio (2013). I enlarged it in photoshop today and was struck by the wild abandon in the marks I made back then; loose, expressive, instinctive.
It reminded me of beginner’s mind; that freedom we have when we start creating, before perfectionism creeps in. Funny how we spend years striving to “improve,” only to realise that joy lives in the unlearning. As Picasso said:
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
I often feel torn between the illustrator and the painter in me; one seeks polish, the other freedom. But I’m learning that spontaneity has its own kind of perfection.
Thanks for reading. 💗
I’d love to hear if you’ve ever tried to return to that playful, messy, beautiful beginner’s mind in your own creative journey.
#BirdGuhl #Anohni #MixedMediaArt #BeginnerMind #ExpressiveArt #CollageArt #ArtMusings #Willowing #arthealing This is day 6 of a ‘gentle return to social media’ read more about this practice here: http://bit.ly/3IHFxir 🌱
