Resistance and desire to create

I have meant to write about this for quite some time, but life gets in a way, and what is more likely – there is a resistance to write about resistance to create. This is something most of us artists face on a daily basis: I am filled with creative ideas, they are bubbling, streaming in, long to be explored and put on paper and canvas. But then there is that thing. Procrastination. Fear. Unidentified resistance to go to my art desk and just start. I wait for something. What is it? Clear schedule, good weather, no family obligation, me time, weekend, holiday, feeling brave, inspiration, good health, tons of energy, lots of money to buy half an art shop. I wait for all of it to arrive, preferably everything together, oh well at least half of it, oh wait and don’t forget – perfect cheerful mood – it has to be there too. So I wait and I wait.

I remember I waited for years. I started waiting in my early twenties and waited until I was 35. I remember Tallulah was just born and then reality hit me: none of it is ever going to arrive, to create that special atmosphere for me to sit down and start painting. I will have to bypass or dismiss all of it as unrealistic or “waaaaay too long” to wait for requirements, for me to become a creative full time.

I started fitting my creative time in between other bits of life. Bad weather? – Where is my heater? No half a day or a day to allocate to art? – I will make art 1 hour and half an hour in between other things. Baby in a way? I will paint with her. Terrified to start painting? – What is there to loose, I’ll just play with art supplies anyway. No inspiration? – Let me just start painting, oh wait, half an hour into the process – and here it comes! Not enough money to buy half an art shop? – I’ll work with what I have, people make a living out of charcoal drawings!

The worst of all of cause to overcome, or lets just say – to ignore – were health issues. How do you create when you have a flu, when you are depressed, or when you are in pain? How do you create with fibromyalgia? I decided to paint anyway, and after a while unexplained and strange phenomenon set in: when I paint, I don’t feel pain. It’s either goes away, or most likely – is there, but I don’t notice it.

I don’t want to scare people, but I often admit that art is hard, for many of us. This is just the way it is, we have an option: either suffer waiting for art to happen, or push through discomfort and make art anyway. To me, the first type of suffering is unbearable. Making art also gets me out of depression, and for some bizarre reason, I create my best art when I have a flu.

It kind of gave me a proof that creation in its pure form, exists besides/ alongside/ and despite of eventualities of life. It’s just does. You just have to take it and use it and discover it for yourself. Don’t wait for tomorrow, life is very short, and tomorrow might never come. Don’t wait for anything. Don’t live in suffering, because you are not creating, drop that suffering, start creating now.

1 year long workshops - which one to choose?

There are few year long workshops that are running today, each one involving a collaboration of about 20 teachers. Which one to choose? I am involved in 3 this year and they are all starting in 1st of January: Life Book with Tamara Laporte, Let’s Face It with Kara Stratchan Bullock, and Paint Your Heart & Soul with Olga Furman.

Here is a list of comparison and differences between these 3 workshops, their strong points and how each one of them can be a great choice for beginner and intermediate artist.

First of all similarities between the 3:

They are all 1 year long, with lessons and inspirational material being delivered to you weekly for the whole year.

Prices are great considering huge amount of teachers and classes given during the course duration. There is no better value for money on any other short term workshops compared to these.

They are all designed for beginner and intermediate artists.

I am fortunate to connect well and know all 3 hosts of these workshops, and find them extremely supportive, sweet and gentle girls, always down to earth and accessible.

Now the differences are boiling down to the theme/focus of attention/style of the workshops:

Life Book:

will aim at healing journey through art, each month and week, having themes related to your inner wellbeing, transforming, unfolding and reconciling things within yourself, through art and with the help of art. My class there will be creating a soulful story art, using symbols of protection, care, shielding, preservation and safety. Tamara herself teaches illustrative type of art, with gorgeous and luminous big eyed girls, cutest animals ever, and soul touching healing messages on the artworks. Healing that this workshop will bring into your life has priceless value, truly.

Let’s Face It:

will aim at practicing painting faces, in huge variety of media, styles, approaches and angles. There are no limits to this fabulous theme in art, always intriguing, always evolving. I will be doing demo on darker skin tones this coming year and give comparison in color palette of painting light versus dark skin tones, as well as Caucasian versus African features. Kara’s style is between illustrative and painterly, with striking contrasts and a touch of quirky patterns. To me there can never be enough of painting faces, I simply adore them!

Paint Your Heart & Soul:

will aim at narrative in art, or story art as I like to call it. This class will have big emphasis on compositional elements, and array of symbols, backgrounds and story art elements to bring forth not just a well painted face, but also body, landscape, patterns, animals and anything else that your soul desires to tackle storytelling in art – my so loved subject. How I am linked to this workshop I cannot yet reveal, since I am not on a teachers list. I was not even technically invited – ha!, But… I crept in and parked myself in there, somewhere… in a middle of all this arty storytelling… You will see! Olga’s style of art is very similar to mine, it’s soulful, expressive and with deep meaning of life’s beauty and tragedy, survival and triumph.

I hope I had your question answered and make it easier for you to choose your favourite most needed workshop for the coming year. Neither of these 3 workshops contradict nor repeat each other, they are very very different! 

To read more about these workshops and sign up to 1 or 2 or all 3, please go through these links:

Life Book

Let's Face It

Paint Your Heart And Soul

Art collaboration with Jeanne-Marie Webb

Jeanne-Marie Webb visited me in Hermanus from Cape Town in May 2016 (about 2 hour drive by car), and we took 1.5 days to paint this artwork together. What started as "I am painting my own thing" kind of artwork, slowly organically merged into cohesive collaboration, united in style and color palette. I love Janne-Marie visits, as they always leave me hugely inspired. She has that calm determination about her, that she applies in her creativity and life, which makes her supportive and balanced friend, one you can rely on when you need help or opinion.

I hope you enjoy this free 20 min, fast forwarded and easy to watch:

I teach on Let's Face It 2017!

Dear friends!

I am so happy to announce that I am going to be a guest teacher in LET’S FACE IT 2017!  It is a year-long, online, art class created and hosted by Kara Bullock, devoted to creating portraits.  It is for any level: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. The 2017 Let’s Face It class has a brand new line up of amazing teachers, and 5 new areas of focus, with some other exciting extras, too!

Click here to find out more about LET’S FACE IT.

This year, Kara is joined by 19, AMAZING, guest teachers!  Together, we will be giving you 50 weeks of lessons that will continue to encourage and support you along your creative journey that you are on.

Since faces is my most favourite subject in art, I feel really blessed to be invited as one of the teachers. This year I will be teaching you how to mix palette for dark skin tones and paint a face, how to create expressive face in your art journal, and few more tips and tricks.

This course is not open for registration yet!  However, you can read more about it and bookmark this page so that on October 10th, you can come back and register. If you register by December 1st, you will get an early bird price. 

The cool part it I get to give away one free spot in this course to one of you!

To enter my give away please subscribe for my newsletter and share/comment on my Facebook post about this giveaway.

I will announce the winner on Friday, 16th September! :)

In the mean time, click here and book mark this page so that you can come back on October 10th and sign up! (I do get commission if you sign up through my link. Thank you! :)) 

I can’t wait to begin this journey with each of you!

Hugs,

Annie.

31 facts about Annie Hamman you didn't know...

Tamara Laporte of willowing just set an example by posting on her blog "31 things you did not know about Tam". She invited everyone to participate and I thought to share my untold truths with all of you:

1.       Age difference between me and my husband is 28 years. I have always loved older men and have had few crushed on teachers in college. But they ignored me. Sigh…

1.       I was born and grew up in USSR in a Muslim republic (Kazakhstan), where people spoke language that has its roots in Arabic and have looks like Chinese people. We drank tea in piala – a large patterned bowl that you would only eat your soup from. And if you visited Kazakh family, they would only pour it a little at a time – a sign of respect. The moment you drink that little – they jump in – and pour some more! Here are some Kazakh girls:

2.       I am 4th generation left-handed on my mother’s side.

3.       When I was 17 me and my friend Tanya decided to dip into an icy cold river (-40C) all year around. We dag up a hole in the ice that was a meter thick, and every morning 4 am we would go there in all the hale and snow, dip in in our swim costumers, get out, get dressed and go to school. We ran a fever for 3 days and then our bodies got adjusted. We did it for 2 years and felt like super-humans! It's not me on a photo, but it looked something like that:

4.       I used to be vegetarian for 8 years (no meat, no fish), eventually I became very defisient in iron and had dark circles under my eyes. Today I eat meat, but avoid wheat, sugar and dairy.

5.       As a child of musicians I was forced to play piano and attended music school 3 times a week since the age of 6, and had to practice 2-4 hours daily. At the age of 10 I started getting panic attacks from stress and psychologist advised my parents to not force me to music. Fortunately they agreed. I hate music to this day and seldom listen to it.

6.       I have 2 tattoos which I got in spur of the moment at the age of 30, while passing tattoo parlour. One is abstract line under my waist at the back and another is 2 butterflies in front, very low. :)

7.       I was raised in a socialistic regime in a family of atheists. Both me and my brother became Christians in our early 30s.

8.       Most favourite dish that I miss from my culture is called Beshbarmak. Pieces of sheep and onions were boiled in their own sauce and layered over steamy sheets of square pasta that looked like lasagna. The dish was eaten with hands, while sheep fat would drip and splash everywhere… Gross and barbaric, but delicious!

9.       I have high pain threshold, which means I don’t feel pain easily. It makes me miss on lots of health problems over the years, and they get noticed only in advanced stages. I usually see puzzled doctors faces who ask: “Why are you not in agonizing pain?” Hmmmm?

10.   I lived on Micronesian Islands for a year when I was 27. These are tiny islands in the Pacific ocean, you have to go there by air from Hong Kong. It rains 365 days a year, but people don’t wear umbrellas. They gave up. Women there look like they came off paintings of Gauguin. They go barefoot and wear long floral skirts and hibiscus in their ears. I painted this painting on canvas board while being there and dragged it all the way to South Arica with me. Transport of it costed me nearly as much as Gauguin original would cost:

11.   I have problems with sleep and back pain. I often feel fatigued during the day due to lack of sleep. Art helps me to get through many bad days.

12.   I used to be in filming industry, making music videos for musicians and behind the scenes documentaries, like for Christian movie “Ordinary People”, directed by my husband.

13.   I have a degree with distinction as a primary school teacher. I never worked in that profession as my nerves could not take it dealing with noise in classrooms.

14.   My parents had dark complexion but I was born with white hair and blue eyes. Apparently my mother asked a midwife: “Are you sure she is mine?” Midwife was really offended. My eyes turned brown at the age of 1. I have my father’s skew bottom lip. :)

15.   Due to 4 endometriosis operations that ate up almost both of my ovaries I was considered infertile, until I got pregnant at 35, on a set of a Christian movie. Miracle Tallulah was born 9 months later.

16.   My maiden name is Anna Alexandrovna Karimova. Middle name in USSR is the name of your father (in my case – Alexander). My brother’s name respectively Mark Alexandrovich Karimov. And sister’s Eugenia Alexandrovna Karimova.

17.   I was married before my current marriage and my earlier art was signed as Anna Lang. It was not a good art, do not look for it!

18.   I love gardening. I used to grow roses and planted over 100 bushes in my garden. I also went through the stages of orchid growing (unsuccessfully) and landscaping with succulents. I grew that rose:

19.   I am half Jewish, by my mother’s side, and used to speak and write Hebrew in my teens which I learned from books on my own. I was also Hebrew teacher in my town at the age of 18. Since then I did not use and entirely forgot the language.

20.   I am crazy about genealogy and dag up a family tree up to 1700s!

21.   I travelled around the world extensively at the age 21 to 28, and from my point of view the most beautiful place in the world is Cape Town:

22.   At school I was extremely shy, intravertive and unpopular. That awkward kid that reads books all the time and excels at poetry reciting in literature classes.

23.   My father was an alcoholic and neither me nor my brother never tasted alcohol until our early 30s. This was our silent protest against alcohol in general. These days I can occasionally have half a glass of wine, but if I try to have more – my blood pressure drops and I pass out. It seems one need to develop an alcohol tolerance since your teen years!

24.   I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type ll few years ago. I used to be on antidepressants but last 2 years I manage it without drugs, and only with the right lifestyle (healthy eating, exersise, routine, painting.) The moment I brake any of the 4 - I kind of relapse. 

25.   I lived in Amsterdam for over a year in 1999 and meet millennium celebrations in the central square in front of Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. At some point the crowd became too large, uncontrollable and everyone started to panic. I got almost squeezed to death in it.

26.   I used to have style and fashion blog for a year. Every day I came up with entirely new outfit, took and photo and placed it on a blog. 365 outfits! Kind of like 365 faces. :)

27.   I have an excellent photographic memory, an ability to vividly recall images from memory after only a few instances of exposure. Probably some type of eidetic memory.

28.   People whose name Anna in USSR are never called by their full name. In my family I was called Anya, Anushka and Nuyta. Somehow became Annie in South Africa and it stuck.

29. Nearly 20 years ago I had a short-term modelling career. I got bored sitting for hours in casting queues. Also, I was too short (6'5') which made it too tough to compete!

30.   Tallulah was born at home in a warm inflatable pool with hypno-birthing techniques. It was an easy and quick birth which was filmed on camera by my husband. Apparently midwife and doula laughed a lot, as I was in my own hypnotic zone and saying lots of ridiculous and inappropriate things!

31.   For a while, I used to be a red-head. :)