Down the rabbit hole...

I just turned 38 on the 15th and celebrated with passion! In recent month my art took into few exciting directions with teaching online and discovering fresh ideas in creating art. I was invited to teach in 3 placed through online video tutorials in 2016, two of which Life Book 2016 (2 entries) and Stencil Girls Products (I will be making there 3 entries next year!), and third multiple teachers workshop which I am not allowed to reveal just yet (but soon!). Meanwhile my 1st workshop Creating Soulful Art With A Story have began and sky-rocketed to the stars with positive feedback from 200 hundred students and all the incredible artworks they have created:

And here is one of the numerous feedbacks received:

I spent yesterday morning and evening watching all the videos and the whole time I was saying "yes, yes, YES!" Sometimes you find an artist that just helps you grow and I definitely found that in Annie. - Jennifer Congora Perry

More testimonials and student artworks you can see HERE. Registration is still open and I am available for support until end of September.

While the workshop was unfolding in all it's beauty, I've been buzy collaging and journalling to my heart content. I created a series of 12 of these cute 6.5'X9.5' Alice in Wonderland Cards that I just adore. I have been wanting to do that for years and finally decided to go ahead and make my childish dream come true. To make these collages I re-purposed baby first words cards:

And here is the result:

And last, but not least, please have a look at this amazing review this talented writer Elizabeth Cooper wrote on my workshops. Being a professional writer, Elizabeth was always fascinated with story art, so she took my workshop on Creating Soulful Art With a Story to discover new ways of exploring her interest through paint. This well written and very positive review left me surprised, humbled and very inspired as a teacher:

ANNIE HAMMAN WORKSHOP REVIEW

And here is some recent Art Journalling pondering and experimenting:

Thank you for reading this and please stay in touch on Facebook and Instagram.

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Teaching on Life Book 2016 + Give Away time!

Hello dear artists-friends! Some really awesome news this time!

I am going to be teaching on Life Book 2016 next year! I feel very privileged and grateful, and humbled to be invited to teach amongst other 23 most incredible and talented teachers.

And even MORE exciting news is that I can give away 1 space on this amazing YEAR LONG art course! Keep reading if you want to find out more about Life Book 2016, and if you want to find out how you can win a spot! :)

First let me tell you a bit more about Life Book in case you haven't heard about it yet. “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 23 incredible art teachers who are sharing their mixed media techniques, tips and tricks with you in well filmed exciting video tutorials weekly – FOR THE WHOLE YEAR. 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).

It’s like, you won’t be able to get away from being creative for the duration of 2016, constantly inspired, constantly stimulated. I personally need it in my life.

This is all very new for me, I only just found out about this Life Book now, and it’s been running for 5 years already with like 22 THOUSAND members on the Willowing.org (omg – where have I been?!). With 8.700 people who have done Life Book in previous years. I am like… speechless. And it’s suitable to all levels of art. Apparently the price is unbelievably good for a 1 year long workshop, so definitely check it out by clicking HERE.

I haven't fully developed my class idea yet. I am planning to come up with a class related to the style that you can see on the below painting, or who knows – maybe even something more awesome? :) It will all depend on a theme of the month that will be allocated to me, but regardless of the theme I will make sure to spoil you all with something very inspirational!

Registration for Life Book opens on October 5th 2015 and the class begins on January 1st 2016.

Keep this page bookmarked so that you can sign up the moment it goes on sale.

Now then, onto the give-away and blog hop. I can give away 1 space on Life Book 2016 to 1 lucky winner, yay! :) And if you follow the blog hop of other teachers (see below for links and dates) you can up your chances of winner a space by entering all the other give-aways also.

How to enter the give-away:

1. Subscribe to my newsletter.

2. Go to my FB page and see the post I made about Life Book, share this post, tagging my name in it – and I will enter you to the draw. Please don’t forget to TAG my name, so that FB send me notification and could I see that you have shared.

Good luck and I will announce the winner in my new blog post and on the same FB page, on my birthday - 15 September!

Here is the list of the other amazing teachers who will be teaching on Life Book – they too will be giving away a spot on Life Book so go check them out and enter their give-aways. Here are the dates for their give-away announcements:

7th September 2015	Tamara Laporte	http://www.willowing.org/
8th September 2015	Annie Hamman	http://anniehamman.com/
9th September 2015	Kristin Dudish	http://kristindudish.com/
10th September 2015	Effy Wild	http://effywild.com/
11th September 2015	Faith Evans-Sills	http://faithevanssills.com/home.html
12th September 2015	Gillian Lee Smith	http://www.gillianleesmithartist.com/
13th September 2015	Ivy Newport	http://ivynewport.com/
14th September 2015	Jane Davenport	http://janedavenport.com/
15th September 2015	Jenny Grant	http://www.flowbyjenny.com/en
16th September 2015	Angela Kennedy / PennyStamper	http://pennystamper.blogspot.co.uk/
17th September 2015	Lisa Viger	http://lisaviger.com/
18th September 2015	Martha Lever	http://marthalever.blogspot.co.uk/
19th September 2015	Mary Beth Shaw	http://www.mbshaw.com/
20th September 2015	Melody Ross	http://www.melodyross.com/
21st September 2015	Pam Carriker	http://pamcarriker.com/
22nd September 2015	Pauline Agnew	http://www.seedbedstudio.net/
23th September 2015	Rae Missigman	http://rae-missigman.squarespace.com/
24th September 2015	Renata Loree	http://renataloree.com/
25th September 2015	Roben-Marie Smith	http://www.robenmarie.com/
26th September 2015	Roxanne Coble	http://bybun.com/
27th September 2015	Shiloh Sophia McCloud	http://www.shilohsophiastudios.com/
28th September 2015	Donna Downey	http://www.donnadowney.com/
29th September 2015	Tracy Verdugo	http://tracyverdugo.com/
30th September 2015	Wyanne Thompson	http://www.wyanne.com/

My new workshop and video-fun collaboration with Tallulah

Just an update on what I've been up to recently... I have taken a giant leap towards online teaching these past two months, so at home I teach art to Tallulah (or she teachers me?), and online I teach other artists, or shall I say I share all my art experience, tips and tricks with all of you – wonderful creative souls. This is one of the artworks I created for my workshop:

The workshop is already full and registration is closing tomorrow, Friday 28^th. It's called “Creating Soulful Art With A Story” and starts on 7^th September 2015. Although it is only 1 week workshop, it has 8 comprehensive instructional videos and might take 2-3 weeks for students to work through. Good news is – I will be available for full support for the duration of whole September. Registration will ten re-open on 1^st October on a self-study basis. More info here (if PayPal button there is gone, it means registration is closed).

I was also excited to receive invitations to teach on other 2 large and popular workshops in 2016, but on that I will talk in a few days. For now it’s a SECRET and I hope you can keep it just for few days longer. :)

Me and Tallulah have been busy experimenting with collaboration on painting faces, taking turns on various stages of the face, and pulling each other into different directions. Well, she definitely pulled me into her direction. I started out with sombre palette, but she moved me into more loose, more abstract and more vibrant face. Her contribution have definitely gave it a more layered intriguing look. Have a look at this fun fast paced 10 minutes video of our collaboration:

Paint My Face - Artist Annie Hamman paints a face with 3 years old Tallulah Jade Rainbow from Annie Hamman on Vimeo.

To read more about Tallulah Jade Rainbow and her painting process, and also to see more videos of her painting large abstract paintings, please visit her personal blog: rainbowgirl.co.za

Tallulah is a professional artist who held her 1^st solo art exhibition at the age of 3 at Bellini Gallery, here in Hermanus, with approximately 30 canvases displayed.

"Somewhere Over The Rainbow", acrylics on canvas board. Created with Tallulah Jade rainbow and shown in above video. Available in my Etsy Shop:

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Transforming few old artworks

Lately I've been digging out some old not very effective artworks and giving them new life. Here are 4 that I just finished and finally quite happy with. Sometimes revival of old proves to be wrong move, when people say that they love old version better, but important thing is that you as an artist happy with final result. Bottom line is: we are not making art to please others, unless it's commissioned work. This one is acrylic on canvas, painted with a small palette knife, but I redone her with brush and more fresh realistic skin tone. Values were also corrected which I think made it more effective. "Listener":

She used to be a simple monoprint in oils, so I gave her a couple of fresh oil layers. "She spoke the truth":

Update in oils. "On the road you warned me about, I go with wavering heart":

Below work was done on 2006, 9 years ago, I used to live in Micronesian islands then, and photographed this native girl somewhere on the road. It might have been my first ever attempt to paint a face, after years of still life, flowers and journaling. So, yea, she was flat and uninteresting and collected dust in my studio ever since. I was not happy with the artwork, but could not give up on it and dragged her all the way from Micronesia to South Africa (24'X30'):

So I gave her a fresh new life and named her "Spring". I painted her face, then Tallulah joined me and helped me to collage lives and paint the tree. Tallulah's free and fearless influence is obvious here and I enjoyed her fresh approach. It is now framed and gracing a wall in Tallulah's blue bedroom. Our first collaboration:

The battle with pastels...

I've tried pastels before, but this time decided to give them a serious go, to really get used to the medium and become comfortable with it. After each artwork I would post on Facebook stating "how I hate pastels", getting encouraging comments from friends to carry on and just get through the stage of mastering new medium. I was curious myself to see whether I really hate pastels or am I just frightened by the new experience. I tried to listen to my thoughts and my heart through the process of creating, determined to see where the problem lies. I discovered that my main "hatred" lies in the uncomfortable scratchy sound pastel make, all the chalky dust they create, that feels so unpleasant on my fingers, and the constant feeling of missing meditative quality of acrylics, that gliding and flow and caress of the brush on canvas. Just to make me doubt my hatred, pastels loved me unconditionally, and the artworks took forms in the glowing soulful faces staring down at me with the question in their eyes: "What is the problem?"  So, here they are, born from the love-hate relationship:

Did me and pastels reconcile our differences? I can't tell. For now, I am giving pastels a cold shoulder and move to my old love - acrylics. And as if struggle within myself is not big enough, I just ordered more pastels from DickBlick. The divorce is not final, so it seems.