One year long art course: a way to exhaust yourself or an important commitment?

If you are an aspiring/ beginner or intermediate artist who is wandering whether a one year long art course is too much of a commitment, here are my thoughts on how it can help you on your artistic journey.

There are several one year long art workshops that have been around for years, 3 of which I have participated on as a collaborative teacher: PYHAS (Paint Your Heart & Soul) - contemporary art on variety of subjects, styles and medium, Life Book - a lot of illustrative and story art, and Let’s Face it - painting faces in variety of ways.

First of all, what is the concept behind one year long art workshops? In few words it’s 30-40 online art teachers are pulled together, to make 2 video classes each. Starting from first week of January, students are beginning to receive by email link to different class each week.

So, why I personally love being a part of one year long art workshops as a teacher and why do I feel that participants are benefiting from them?

1. You can go at your own pace, open these classes any time, view videos, paint. You can do all of them or only those that you like. You can give it an hour daily, or only couple of hours on weekend - it’s up to you and how busy you are. Any amount of time spent making art is worth it. There are no strict requirements on how deeply you engage with the material.

2. You have lifetime access.

3. You can participate from any country from the comfort of your home.

4. Discovery of your art style and preferences is made easy, because of variety of instructors and their respective styles during the year. By end of the year you know what you love and what you don’t love, and your signature style begin to emerge.

5. You discover artists/ teachers that you love and can now follow directly.

6. Large community of other students like you will share art and support you in private FB group. By sharing your art and engaging you create art friends for life. I myself made friends in online art workshops 10 years ago, and still friends with them today, few I even travel to meet in US all the way from South Africa.

7. Teachers offer their support and encouragement on the same FB group.

8. It’s extremely affordable, when you take yearly amount of registration and divide into an amount of weeks per year (or amount of classes), it works out as something like $2 per class.

If you are thinking to give it a try, PYHAS-2024 have already opened registration for next year. I will be among teachers there 8th year in a row! In 2024 I will be teaching a story art with elements of collage, mixed media and acrylics, as you see in example below.

Even if you see this post later in the year of 2024, you can still sign up, gain access to whole year material and catch up with others. Sign up any time, go at your own pace, share if you want, ask for support, and enjoy dicovering your style.

I wish you much joy and success in your artistic journey!

“Light above me” - mixed media. (Original is sold, prints are available here.)

Blog Hop and space give-away on Ever After e-course

There is new collaborative e-course coming up on 1^st of July, on the theme of fairytales, run by Tamara Laporte – “Ever After 2016”, and I am a one of collaborative teachers. A dream come true! And not because collaborative on Tamara’s e-courses feels like winning a Noble Prize to me, but because I am honestly madly hopelessly inevitably crazy about fairytales. That’s why I made myself Tallulah, so that I could have an excuse to read fairytales at bedtime every night. Ok, last part is not true, Tallulah has a happy OOOPS! (but winning the Noble part is true – I swear!) To get to the most important part of my babbling – you can win 1 free spot on this e-course, that I am entitled to give away!

Do you know what Blog Hop is? If you don’t, it works like this. Each day hop to the blog of a collaborating teacher (list below), read what their conditions for winning is, comply with conditions, hop to the next blog next day, to do the same. You can up your chances of winning a space by entering all the other teacher’s giveaways. 12 chances to win is very cool! :)

The Draw Is Complete: The random winner is - Sandra Schmidt! Congratulations Sandra!

A bit more about Ever After: it's a mixed media art & style development course with a fairytale theme hosted by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts. Tam is joined by 12 popular mixed media art teachers who will all share beautiful fairy-tale inspired lessons with you AND, in Module 2 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!

You can find out more (and sign up with the Early Bird price) by clicking HERE.

My chosen fairy tale is Snow White. My lesson will be inspired by this fairy tale, and my presented work will somewhere along the line of this style of painting:

Registration opens on May 16th 2016 and the class begins on July 1st 2016. So if you want to start your summer drawing and painting fairy-tales, exploring your own personal story and style and hang out with a wonderful creative community of like-minded souls, be sure to join once registration opens! :) Keep this page bookmarked so that you can sign up the moment it goes on sale! :)

Good luck with the draw!

Hugs,

Annie.

Blog Hop Dates	Blog Hop Schedule	Site
2nd May 2016	Tamara Laporte	http://www.willowing.org
3rd May 2016	Micki Wilde	http://thesecrethermit.blogspot.co.uk/
4th May 2016	Andrea Gomoll	http://www.andrea-gomoll.de
5th May 2016	Carla Sonheim	http://www.carlasonheim.com
6th May 2016	Annie Hamman	http://anniehamman.com
7th May 2016	Karine Bosse	http://www.kabostudio.com
8th May 2016	Cinnamon Cooney	http://hartparty.blogspot.co.uk/
9th May 2016	Mystele Kirkeeng	http://www.mystele.com
10th May 2016	Galia Alena	http://www.galiaalena.com/
11th May 2016	Jane Davenport	http://www.janedavenport.com
12th May 2016	Rachelle Panagarry	http://www.rachellepanagarry.com/
13th May 2016	Effy Wild	http://effybird.com

Students work and testimonials from Fearless Expression

  Fearless Expression workshop is up and running since 29 of February and new students are coming in every day. We have lots of magnificent art created by very talented artists. There are fabulous works of arts done with kids, and one mother have done it with each of her 4 kids! And there are really beautiful works of art produced by artists by themselves, without children, using fearless techniques learned from Tallulah and me. Below are some of the students works, and there are so many more, I wish I could proudly display them all here, but in this case the page will go on an on!

If you are still thinking about signing up, it's absolutely not too late. I am here for support and daily check our FB group to comment on new entries. Everyone in the group is very kind and gentle with comment, we get encouragement from each other daily. Registration page is HERE.

Here are few testimonials:

You are so wow just wow! I haven't ever been a technical painter, I have no formal training and have always felt this has held me back. In your fearless expression class, I have felt like I can finally give myself permission to do my art the way I was meant to. From the heart and soul, not worried about whether I am "good enough" to call myself an artist. I want to thank you for this! For me it's hard to be vulnerable and let my guard down, and with your class, it has given me courage to take back my worth! It's so liberating every time I do a piece from your class, collaboration with Rosie or watch Rosie! It has not only changed my perception of art/creating, but on life in general! You my friend are doing such amazing work on a soul level! I hope you realize how inspiring you are! – Sara Burch

I've spent the last hour or two watching videos and I've enjoyed them so much... you guys are just a joy to watch and I've had lots of fun and been really inspired. I've given another layer to my first canvas and annihilated another unwanted picture! Thank you again, I really feel that with your help (and Tallulah's!) I'm growing as an artist. You guys are fab! – Jo Hudson

To read more testimonials please CLICK HERE.

Fearless Expression Workshop Registration Open!

 

I am so excited guys!

I am announcing release of my second workshop “Fearless Expression” coming up on 29 February 2016!

I’ve been pondering on the concept for the whole year, starting even before my Soulful art Workshop, but to gather necessary courage and pull it together – it took me a while. It’s a complex subject. Collaboration with my daughter Tallulah (photo above), freedom of expression, unfolding. Intuitive fearless art. Loose expressive painting. I cannot believe it I even dared to approach the subject! It did not come to me easy and I almost dropped the ball several times. Fearless expression does not come without fear!

To read more about it, please visit my registration page.

Or watch the 3 minute video first?

Fearless Expression Online Workshop Promo January 2016 from Annie Hamman on Vimeo.

Early-bird special starts today and there is also a draw to win 3 spaces in the workshop. To be entered in a draw, please share this on social media and leave a comment here on where you shared it.

Thank you for staying in touch and hope to see you in class!

Story Art Stages

Hello Dear Artists! The busy season is in. It is especially evident in the tourist town of Hermanus South Africa, that I am in. Tourists are living us all out of town, lol! No parking, no tables in the restaurants, almost no air left, he-he. But well, we Hermanians know special secret places to hang out…

I’ve been busy with all sorts of things art lately.

Below are my recent story art works and reference images I used for them. Some of you have seen it on FB and Instagram, but I wanted to share here stages of my work and how they arrived where they arrived.

“Hanging out with the angels” had 3 different girls put together in it, plus 3 separate pairs of feet plus two pairs of arms plus a bird. Below are stages of this work:

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And here are the reference images I used to put it together:

“Crescere. Grow” was inspired by an image found on Pinterest, plus ballerina feet:

I have had inquires on whether I am going to make bigger e-course related to story art, and I am considering to cook up something like 3-4 weeks long next year closer to June. I would love to hear if any of you would be interested.

As many of you know I am also participating on collaborative 1 year long e-courses, that start on 1^st of January 2016. In Life Book I am doing collaboration with Tallulah on 18^th January and Intuitive art (much like my story art but without reference) in August.

On Let’s Face it I teach palette knife technique in colourful face and 1 full body piece also related to story art. 16 fabulous portrait teachers will be teaching there for the whole year!

Only 2 weeks left until these two incredible workshops start!

Will chat to all of you later in few days with more arty things. I am planning few blog posts this months, please forgive me – I just have too much to share. :)