Life Book 2021 The Tam Edition

Lesson projects & themes:

• Main Lesson: A Creative Warm Up – Lightness of Being. In this session we will go over some warm up steps, both for the mind and for the hand. This sessions is particularly handy for those who are new to the mixed media art world and you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed and unfamiliar with the art supplies and techniques. It’s also a helpful session for those who have a fear of creating with a heavy critic.
• Main Lesson: The Goddess of Light. Create a painting of a character who represents your inner strength. I’ve called mine ‘Goddess of Light’, but this character could be a wise crone, an inner superhero, or other character you associate with strength and resilience. This character will function as a protector and strong warrior to support us. The painting will include meaningful symbolism and your word(s) for the year should you choose to include them. We will create a front facing portrait of a female character. I have provided a traceable file for those of you who feel a little intimidated by drawing.
• Bonus Lesson: The Happy Owl. Create a colourful owl!
• Main Lesson: Blessings & Gratitude. Spend some time with ‘gratitude’ and incorporate those things/ people/ animals/ experiences in our lives that we are grateful for into our paintings. For the art part of the session we are going to create an angled (or ¾ portrait) of a female surrounded by nature and cosmic elements which will all represent the things, people, items, experiences, animals etc in your life that you are grateful for. It will be painted in a loose, expressive style with high contrast. We will also look at using negative space to help with composition, balance and harmony as well as how mark making and patterns vs ‘quieter’ part of a painting can help with effective contrast, as well.
• Meditation: Empathy Meditation. An ’empathy meditation’ which is  designed to help you receive empathy & compassion for any pain, discomfort or negative emotions you might be experiencing right now. You can listen to it daily or whenever you would like some empathic/ compassionate resonance.
• Meditation: Gratitude Meditation. A ‘gratitude meditation’ that you can listen to daily or whenever you’d like to connect to gratitude. Keeping daily gratitude lists, a gratitude diary, creating art with a focus on gratitude and/or listening to gratitude meditations can support good mental health as well as counter the ‘negativity bias’.
• Bonus Lesson: Beary Awesome. Create a cute bear in a sweater who is helping to celebrate all your positive features and achievements, yay! We will focus on patterning and I introduce you to some ‘zentangling’.  I really enjoyed creating this bear, I hope you do too!
• Freebie/ Bonus: The Zen Butterfly. Dive more deeply into the fun zentangle process!
• Main Lesson: The Tree That Holds You. Create a beautiful blossom tree inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Almond Blossom Paintings’ and focus on honouring our feelings/ inner experiences and grounding into the now and our bodies.
• Main Lesson: I am the Light. Create ‘paint over collage’ painting and focus on transforming limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs! It’s one of my favourite techniques.
• Meditation: Transforming Limiting Beliefs into Liberating Beliefs. Transforming limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs! It’s one of my favourite techniques!
• Main Lesson: Nature Nymph Guardian. In order to become whole a human, integration of the shadow is as important as integration of the light. The shadow is more frightening to many of us though. For this session we will look at integrating some of our shadow aspects on page that incorporates a Nature Nymph, who, as a creature of nature is very familiar with both the light and the dark aspects of life
• Main Lesson: Sausage Clay Pot of Self Love.  For this session we will create a beautiful “sausage pot” out of paper clay. Glitter and gem stones may be involved to adorn the pot. We will fill this pot with precious items that remind us to love ourselves and messages of self love & self care and positve affirmations/ quotes
• PLUS ONE TAM TASTER session ‘Fox Wisdom’, that Tam released for the Life Book 2021 Taster Week.

While Life Book 2021 is still running, new lessons by Tam will be added to this class as they are released in Life Book 2021.