Week 1 of the 100 day project.
It's already been a whole week of illustrating every day :O
Honestly I’ve had a great week! I think that it’s the first week in a long time where I’ve drawn or painted every single day (I like to think that its the mark of a successful artist, so I’m incredibly glad).
I do always try to get some kind of making or crafting into my day - to varying degrees of success - mostly to give my mind a break and to regulate my metal health, but it’s normally crochet or digital drawing. It’s extremely nice to make time for my first love every day.
Now that I’ve had some time to do the challenge and reflect on it, I think I’m going to amend my rules a little bit. I still love my subject matter, which is just stuff that I own that I feel needs recognition for being cool shit (It’s mostly trinkets) (I have many many many trinkets) (they make me happy). I still love creating on loose paper, and I have plans to experiment with this a lot more later on - even though I think that my car paintings would be cooler as a triptych on canvas.
The rules that I want to add are admittedly not so much about the art itself, but about me as a person and how my brain works. When I hear ‘100 day project’, my brain automatically thinks CHALLENGE!!! 100 day project = 100 completely finished illustrations, RIGHT??? That’s a completed illustration every day. My brain likes to finish things. I like to tenaciously tick all of the boxes. I love to meticulously defeat a to-do list line by line, each little deed done and dusted. Dead and defeated.
And I really would love to have 10 completed pieces of work at the end of this. But the reality is that some ideas take longer than the time that I have, and while this project IS a challenge, it isn’t a productivity challenge, it’s a habit challenge. You have to focus on the building of habits in order to build productivity. A marathon, not a sprint (if you pardon the cliche). If I view this as a productivity challenge, I will burn out very quickly.
The new rule that I bring before the council thus follows: Do not focus on finishing and illustration every day, but do illustrate every day for at least 30 minutes. All those in favour say aye? AYE! I think the ayes have it, motion carried. *bangs gavel*
(That’s how I imagine it goes based on TV shows that I’ve seen, I’ve never actually been to court…)
The other new rule that I wanted to add is also related to burn out, and it involves the dreaded social media (which I’ve been finding really shit recently, and I have for a while). It’s a lot of effort to post every day for no reward other than failing mental health. I am actively making the effort to not just doomscroll endlessly in despair, which is very difficult, and being on there in order to post is not helping. My new new rule is that I don’t have to post every single day. Once or twice a week is perfectly adequate for this project (especially because there are still things i’m making and posting outside of this challenge.)
So here is newly amended list of rules:
Illustrate cool shit that I own every day.
I must work on loose paper (even if the temptation to paint on canvas grows more every day.)
I do not have to complete an illustration every day, I just have to work on one every day for at least 30 minutes.
Do not ever ever ever post on social media every single day ever again.
Now that the rules part is over, here is my weekly round up off illustrations!
Day 1 - The Egg Boys, Day 2 - The Frog Prince, Day 3 - The Houseplant and The Lurker, Day 4, 5 & 6 - My Favourite Cars, Day 7 - The Lurker without Houseplant.
I’m really happy with the first week of this project. I’ve tried to keep it fairly simple so far, but I do have a list of ideas and experimentation that I’m so excited to try out.
Love Love,
BethyPig xx
