Life Book 2023 The Tam Edition

Lesson projects & themes:

• Tam TASTER session: Blessings of a Feather Taster Session. Create a beautiful watercolour feather.
• Tam TASTER session: Butterfly Alchemy Taster Session. Create a beautiful front facing portrait of a Butterfly Goddess!
• Tam TASTER session: Otterly Lovely Taster Session. Create a super quirky cute otter in fun mixed media!
• Tam TASTER session: Perfectly me Taster Session. Create colourful quirky bird that will help remind you to embrace yourself fully, quirks and all.
• Main Lesson: A Creative Warm Up – New Beginnings. In this session we will go over some warm up steps, both for the mind and for the hand. This session 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 we’ll be using this year. I hope to address some of your fears (we’ll write them all down!) and I encourage you to be present to your feelings (whatever they are). I also want to get you creatively ‘warmed up’ by sharing some easy layering techniques with you. It’s all about playing, learning, exploring and enjoying your journey. No drawing required!
• Main Lesson: Three Wise Things. Create a painting of a character who represents either you or your higher self, surrounded by 2 characters (a swallow and an owl) who represent 3 Wise Things you’ll take with you. Start mindfully and meaningfully and include some very specific messages and symbolism into our painting. This painting will represent us bringing our ‘highest wisdom’ with us. 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. This is a time for honouring and letting go all that’s happened in the last year. We’re looking for some kind of closure and also to mindfully set some positive intentions for the coming year.
• Main Lesson: Garden of Gratitude. We are going to 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 today we are going to create an angled (or ¾ portrait) of a female surrounded by botanical and abstract elements which will represent the things, people, items, experiences, animals etc in your life that you are grateful for. We will paint a high contrast portrait paint mostly watercolour paint.
• Main Lesson: Painting our Aliveness. Create a grounding portrait in acrylics that honours the feelings and needs we are experiencing in the moment.
• Main Lesson: Your Story Matters. Create a ‘light in the dark; portrait with acrylic paints. The portrait will connect us with ‘what is alive in us, both dark and light’ and help us stay grounded and present to ‘what is there for us in the moment’.
• Main lesson: Safe Shadows. We all have aspects of ourselves that we don’t like or feel ashamed of. Ignoring or repressing these sides is often unhelpful and can result in unwanted behaviours. In this lesson we will look at some of our ‘shadow’ in a safe and sacred way. By our side will be the protector: Wolf. Your secrets and vulnerabilities will be safe with him. We will paint a beautiful, expressive, watercolour painting, of the Accepting Shadow & Light mighty wolf.
• Main Lesson: Hallowed Grounds. Create a beautiful autumnal painting that contains a wise mystical woman who holds a raven in her hand. The raven is an animal that is often connected to wisdom, transformation and insight.
• Bonus Lesson: Steady Like The Elephant. Create a colourful yet grounding elephant!
  
• Bonus Lesson: Your Magnificence. Create a painting of a sweet yet magnificent whale!
• Bonus Lesson: Portrait of a Cow in Watercolour. Create a watercolour painting of a wonderful cow!
• Meditation: Empathy Meditation. This 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. This 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’.
• Meditation: Beauty in the Shadow, a guided visualisation.

While Life Book 2023 is still running, the new ‘TBC’ lessons by Tam will be added to this class as they are released in Life Book 2023.