Thoughts on the 100 day project

15 July 2015

I did it, I completed The 100 Day Project. For 100 days, I’ve had a recurring TeuxDeux on my list: 100 day project. It’s gone, it’s over, it’s been 100 days. And I thought I would share some thoughts about going through this process, along with some of my favorites from the last 100 days.

One of my favorites, home alone for a few days, off to our local for dinner at the bar, pizza, old fashioned, and the NY Times crossword.

I started out the project with my idea: 100 Days of Sketch Journal. I wanted something that would get me drawing again, but I’m very attached to words, so I wanted them to be involved as well. Plus, in using my day-to-day life, I was hoping to have more than enough material for the duration of the project. I also started with some limitations, I was only going to use the pencil tool in Paper and nothing else. But that quickly went out the window as I wanted the ability to be able to do more, so I started using other tools within a few weeks.

This one makes me laugh when I think of it. Me in bed, staring at Venus through the skylight, yelling to G downstairs that I can see Venus from my bed, and then making up a song about it (making up songs is something I do quite often).

I collected all of them in both Flickr and a journal in Paper, so I have them to look back on and shared them with the world. I also started off doing several small sketches of various things on one day, but quickly moved into a more doable, and frankly fun, format of doing one sketch of something and writing a bit about it. I traveled a lot during this time period, so using Paper on my iPad mini was the perfect choice. In addition to being able to take it easily everywhere with me, I learned a lot about the product, the tools, how to use them, and they came out with new tools to play with during the 100 days, which added more variety.

One fantastic benefit, the project got me to start looking around during the day a lot more, as shown here, I noticed a lot of small things. This can be seen in 26, 28, 60, 72, and more.

Some days, I squeaked in just under the wire, right before midnight. And I did miss one day. I traveled to Montreal in June, on a red eye, which I never do well with, ended up going to bed extremely early feeling ill, and I didn’t realize until the next day that I had forgotten to do my sketch journal entry. I was upset, but I did two that morning to catch up. No one’s perfect, but I did have a good run for 78 days and caught right back up.

I traveled more than I normally do during this time period, so this is a bit of a journal for me of those travels as well.

I have favorites in the project, ones that I took extra time on, or are linked to good memories. I can look back on the 100 days and see lots of bits of my life in there and it triggers more than just what I wrote about for that particular day. This is the unexpected, but very much appreciated, aspect of the project. When I look at the full album of the images, I see my life and remember some of the small, but fantastic things that happened. G is encouraging me to take the journal from Paper and make a book out of it, which is doable and I’m seriously considering. Just for me, just to have something tangible. These 100 drawings and the words that go along with them mean more than I thought they would when I started on this journey.

If there was one thing that I had a hard time with in the project overall, it was that some days I wanted to sketch about something personal, something I didn’t want to share with the world. I’m excited for the future though, because now I have the habit of drawing daily, and I’m going to try doing that on actual paper, in a journal I made and if I want to take a picture and share it, I can, or it can just be for me.

Recording the amazing and rare, such as a hummingbird flying a few feet from my face.

As a side note: thank you so much Elle Luna for the encouragement. I’m finally drawing again after a very long dry spell and it’s been great. Your book about choosing must and this project have helped me see more of my must and I’m starting to plan how to keep moving in that direction.