New Online Courses
and more Paris dates!
Dear all
I hope you are well.
I had a lovely few days in Paris last week. The David Hockney 25 exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton was fantastic. And my mindful watercolour workshop (attended by five delightful women) was a perfect way to spend a morning. I’ll be back in Paris in the summer and am excited to announce that I will be running more workshops then. Here are the dates: 21, 28 July, 4, 11, 18 August 2025 (all Mondays). The booking page is viewable now…sales go live tomorrow (Thursday 7 May 2025) at 6pm GMT. Click here for details
Places will be strictly limited. If you are desperate to bag a spot on a particular date, you can message me tansy@tansyhargan.com and I’ll save a place for you.
Now for my new online courses. These will also go on sale tomorrow evening at 6pm and can be viewed by clicking here
Briefly, here’s what they’re all about…
How to Speak Colour
Lesson release dates: 26 May - 8 June 2025
In this foundational course, the complexities of colour are deconstructed into manageable building blocks to help you achieve fluency in the magical but elusive language of colour.
Designed as a prequel to my “Finding Your Colour Voice” course, this is the essential tool for anyone wishing to refresh or improve their understanding and use of colour.
Ten easy-to-follow lessons are packed with practical and fun exercises to reframe the technicalities of colour in a new and accessible way.
TOPICS COVERED
What is colour anyway?
Observing colour in art and nature
Understanding the attributes of colour: hue, value and intensity
The importance of context (perception and colour interaction)
Understanding the colour wheel of primary, secondary and tertiary colours
Basic rules of colour mixing (how to make the colours you want)
Making chromatic greys and other neutrals
How to choose colours and assemble limited palettes
Manipulating hue, value and intensity (aka chroma or saturation)
How to use colour to bring harmony, unity and contrast to a composition
Rainbow Reverie
Lesson release dates: 30 June - 13 July 2025
Imagine living each day guided and buoyed by colour...waking with a clear mind and a sense of being present?
This transformational course - the sequel to Finding Your Colour Voice - is all about cultivating wonderment and calm by establishing a dual daily practice focused on colour. First, meditative painting. The naturally relaxing act of slow watercolour painting combines perfectly with mindfulness: to still your mind, steady your hand and allow colour to captivate your eyes and heart. Second, keeping a colour diary. By considering and documenting colour as it happens, your connection with it matures. The practice is both cathartic and practical, providing you with an emotional outlet while building a valuable resource.
These two activities run continuously through the course - separate but intertwined. Both build the habit of living in the moment by marvelling at colour. Mindful painting is presented in easy-to-follow incremental steps, while keeping a colour diary is shared in the form of daily tips and ideas, and small projects.
Topics include:
Exploration without expectation (mindfulness in the context of painting)
Watercolour 101 (an introduction or refresher)
Ways to get started
Mass vs space (responding to edges and negative space)
Show & tell (a look through my colour diaries)
Observing and recording colour (where, when, how)
Some simple sketching methods
Hand lettering, automatic writing, annotation and ideation
Finding (and using) colour palettes
Colour and the psyche
Meanwhile Art
Lesson release dates: 4 - 17 August 2025
The aim of this course is to provide novel art activities that can be done in between times...or simply when you need time off from your own thoughts. Perhaps you have a few minutes between appointments, or several hours in an airport; it might be a much longer period, between jobs or relationships, or while recovering from surgery or bereavement. Wherever you are in life, Meanwhile Art will lighten things up and relieve you of decision making with time-based activities ranging from one-minute mental exercises to absorbing projects that could last weeks. These may be enjoyed in isolation or used in combination with follow-on suggestions, creating a virtuous circle of thinking and doing: a rabbit hole of creative positivity.
Meanwhile Art, as a concept, is a reaction to the all-consuming emphasis on productivity and achievement that has come to underscore 21st century education, employment, and even life. Doomscrolling has replaced hobbies, while hobbies have become competitive, expensive, burdensome, and stressful. Sometimes, being told what to do and just trusting the process is all the therapy you need.
If you've ever thought "I want to make art but don't know what to do", this course is for you.
WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING?
Looking, writing, simple sketching (don't worry...I'll show you how), day dreaming, collage, play, seeing things differently, renaming objects, colouring in, constructing shapes, following rules, breaking rules, going off on tangents, having secret thoughts, collecting signs & symbols, making diagrams, being inventive, feeling content....
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So, there they are
I’m thrilled with the way the ideas and exercises have come together. They are linked but different and follow on nicely from my previous online offerings.
Everything is now available on a LIFETIME basis. This applies to all my previous courses too, which, by the way, will also be available to buy from tomorrow at 6pm too.
They will be available at the early bird price of £84 (£68 concession), which is 20% off the regular price, until 26 May 2025. After that the price will go up to the regular price of £105 (£85 concession).
What’s the concession about?
The lower price is provided on an honesty box basis for people on a genuinely low income. It is funded via a private grant for widening participation in art education. The discount is not funded by customers paying the full price. Rather than saying that retired people and students automatically qualify (both labels that in themselves don’t necessarily mean that someone is hard up), I am saying that it is for people who do not have much disposable income.
Frequently Asked Questions
This is way overdue! I get loads of questions and would save myself hours if I would only get myself sorted with an FAQ page.
If you have any questions about ANYTHING (online courses, in-person events, my background, teaching philosophy, favourite architect/painting/city, most memorable meal, first memory…whatever) please get in touch by clicking → HERE. As well as making the long overdue static page on my website, I will be making two videos for each of the new courses.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!
Take care
Tansy x