Here I go again - My 4th 100 Day Project
This little blob kitty was a happy accident a couple years ago when I was swatching watercolors.
He is my inspiration for this year’s 100 Day Project.
What is the 100 Day Project?
Originally graphic design professor Michael Bierut taught this concept at Yale as the “100 Day Workshop.” His students were assigned to perform and document a design operation every day for 100 days and make a presentation of the project on the last day. In 2013, Elle Luna collaborated with friends to launch a social media version of the project. Lindsay Jean Thomson started co-leading the project in 2017. It gets more popular every year and as of today the #The100DayProject hashtag has over 2 million posts. For more details visit the official website. It is 100% free to participate and it’s not just for artists.
The “Rules” to play along:
Choose an action to perform daily for 100 days. Dance, take photos, paint, sing, crochet, etc. - something creative that you are excited about
Post on social media each day using the hashtag #The100DayProject
Select your own unique hashtag to use with each post
Sounds simple enough, right? But like a lot of artists I have a love-hate relationship with art challenges. As a recovering perfectionist, I have a really hard time deciding what to do for open-ended challenges like the 100-Day-Project. Put me in a creative box and I will cut, paste, and collage my way out of it. But “do whatever you want for 100 days” starts an almost obsessive track in my brain on choosing The Perfect Challenge. But the to-do list part of my brain loves having something to check off every day and bonus points when it is something creative instead of something practical like brushing my teeth or (god forbid) exercising.
So far I’ve completed the 100 Day project three times. My first 100 Day Project was in 2019 and I used Jennifer Orkin Lewis’ book “100 Days of Drawing” as my guide. I skipped 2020 thanks to the pandemic, but in 2021 I made postcard-sized collage birds. Last year, for each week of the project I chose a different theme and a different material/technique (drawing, painting, collage, stamp carving, gelli printing, digital, needle felting, and more). You can see all of them on Instagram.
My original thought for this year was to build up my portfolio with art to use for cards and stationery. That idea lasted about 10 minutes. I know that I would spend hours every day working on each piece, wanting it to be perfect so I’m not “wasting my time.” Way too much pressure - 100 finished pieces of art in 100 days? No thanks! What I really need is a way to fight my perfectionism, to loosen up at the beginning of my art sessions, and to generate ideas, instead of just diving in and expecting a masterpiece.
And then I remembered a couple years ago when I was swatching watercolor paints for a new palette and the swatch for Jane’s Grey didn’t go as planned. It was drying funny (as watercolor does) and I folded it in half and tried again. Later when I was cleaning up, I opened the “failed” swatch and immediately saw a cat’s face - like an accidental Rorschach ink blot test. I couldn’t resist doodling some lines to add his ears, eyes, and whiskers.
The ink blot test is a form of pareidolia - the tendency to make shapes and pictures (like animals, faces, or objects) out of a random or ambiguous pattern. Seeing animals in cloud formations or the man in the moon are other examples of pareidolia.
Could I do tiny blob paintings for 100 days? Probably. But do I want to? No, I would get bored. However I do think I can use the blob technique along with other similar ones (sidewalk cracks, clouds, etc.) to keep it interesting. So just like that, four weeks later, I finally have my 100 Day Project idea.
If you need me, I’ll be in my studio cutting 100 pieces of paper into Artist Trading Card size (2.5” x 3.5”).
TLDR - My 100 Day Project for 2023 is to use random shapes (man-made or from nature) as prompts to complete a tiny drawing based on what I see in those shapes (pareidolia)