How to boost your creativity with the 100 day project!

100 days of art making

Have you ever heard about the 100 day project?

Just a 2 weeks ago I got notice about a free international project, called The 100 Day Project – it started the 31rd of January. Before you stop reading: You can start any time!!! So it’s worth to continue!

I heard about the project in the podcast “Art Juice” of Alice Sheridan and her artist collegue Louise Fletcher who run this entertaining art talks since quite a while. This remarkable artist’s are chatting about their artist lifes, about art marketing and about thousand and one thing of meaning. They talk about the up’s and down’s and the challenges of the professional artist life in a very honest and entertaining way – a pleasure to listen! This time Alice was interviewing Lindsay Jean Thomson, the organizer of the 100 day project. Thats how I learned about it.

What is the 100 day project?

The idea is simple: choose a creative project, do it every day for 100 days for 15 to 30 minutes and share your process online. That’s your commitment to yourself. Most people will share it with the hashtag #the100dayproject on Instagram. But it is up to you with whom you will share – Facebook, your family group, What`s App Group or your diary.

Every year thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of creating. Anyone can participate (yes, that means anyone, artist and non-artist!) Every person who wants to give room to her creativity and will commit to do something creative every day.

Some doubts and some hope

I was intrigued and repelled when hearing about the project. Intrigued because I love to work with a community that follows a creative goal. Painting is a loney job. Also intrigued by the push that the commitment to share the work would give me. Appalled I was because I already have some commitments to follow and 100 days, that’s a pretty long time! No way to commit myself for so long.

Nevertheless, in case I would participate, what kind of a project would I choose? What would interested me long enough that I would stick to it? What would be feasable, that I can do it without having to overcome too many obstacles, including my own laziness and my being no good following my commitments to myself? The more I mulled over this questions, the less I knew what woul be an interesting project, the more I got involed.

Taking a decision

I decided to give it a try. The past weeks I had lost a lot of my mojo and was not at all intrigued to work in my studio – call it Corona paralization. Suddenly the 100 day project opend up a little path to somewhere. In the end I came up with the very simple idea to do color swatches. As a painter I do them time by time but never follow up and then forgot about them. So I would follow this path with persistence and collect a lot of colour swatches! The idea is very simple and feasable and will serve my sense for practicallity, usefulness and my passion for colours. And of course I am free to change to a new project when ever I want or to just let go. Nobody will check on that. But as long as your in and post, there will be a good support of fellow artists, who are in the same situation! I experienced the merits of it during lockdown 2020 when I participated in the Artist Support Pledge.

Untill now I am very inspired by the project and the freedom I gave to myself. Some days I do a lot, on an other day I am fine with just 4 colour swatches. I started with the ZORN palette. It’s incredible to see what kind of colours you can create from just 4 colours like ochre, red and black and white. A wonderful addition to this work is reading more about colour theory and other artist’s way with colours. Now I am glad I have a little red threat in this challenging times. It brings me into my studio every day and to know I am a part of a greater community. What a great experience to slow down and enjoy taking time to explore my passion about colour without having to take care of any other deadlines for creating a body of work. Slowing down does me a lot of good.

How about boosting your creativity routine ?

Probably the idea of the colour swatches will not carry me through 100 days. Something new will evolve, I am sure about this. I already see after a wee it’s doing me a lot of good. We are in a time where we don’t know what’s next. So at least I know , what I am up too!
How about you?

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