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Faces / Portraits
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!
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Faces / Portraits
Hallowed Grounds
Create a beautiful autumnal painting!
Create a beautiful autumnal painting! -
Faces / Portraits
Elizabeth Bennet
Create a painting inspired by Jane Austen’s character ‘Elizabeth Bennet’!
Create a painting inspired by Jane Austen’s character ‘Elizabeth Bennet’! -
Faces / Portraits
Garden of Gratitude
Paint a high contrast portrait!
Paint a high contrast portrait! -
Males / Boys
Dreamscapes and Shadows: A Journey with Morpheus
Create a beautiful painting of the Deity Morpheus!
New
Create a beautiful painting of the Deity Morpheus! -
Faces / Portraits
The High Priestess
Create a painting inspired by The High Priestess archetype!
Create a painting inspired by The High Priestess archetype! -
Animals
The Sacred Sea Turtle
Create the exquisite beauty and essence of the sea turtle!
Create the exquisite beauty and essence of the sea turtle! -
Life Book 2023
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 like minded 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 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!
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Life Book 2024
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 like minded 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 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!
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Animals
The Spirited Snow Leopard
Create a beautiful snow leopard!
Create a beautiful snow leopard! -
Animals
Owl Odyssey
Create a beautiful watercolour owl in flight!
Create a beautiful watercolour owl in flight! -
Faces / Portraits
Goddess Autumnus
Create the inspiring Goddess Autumnus!
Paint the inspiring Goddess Autumnus!
25% Off Early Bird Ending Soon!
Hey friends, I wanted to remind you that the 25% off early bird price for my new course Creating Cuties ends soon! Be sure to join soon if you want to grab it at the lower price!
Sometimes… the world feels too loud, too fast, too much.
That’s when I turn to cute art — to soften the edges and reconnect with calm. 🎨🕊️
Creating Cuties is an online art course for your soul.
Together we’ll paint sweet, soft-hearted animals — like little kitten in a woolly jumper (sweater) or a gentle dog with a butterfly on her nose.
💖 Let this be your moment to:
🌸 Slow down and reconnect
🎨 Create soothing, happy art
🐾 Paint 7 beautiful characters with my step-by-step support
🎁 Save 25% (or £22 / $30) with early bird
📥 Lifetime access + PDFs + traceables
Feel better through brushstrokes. 💗
Join us here: https://bit.ly/CreatingCuties (or link in my bio/ link tree/ stories) xoox
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 🌱
