100-day project - episod 3

 Days 011 to 028

A lot has happened since my last blogpost on the 100-day project! 

Focus on the seascapes

After the first 10 days, I decided to do less trees, and focus more on the other projects I wanted to takle, especially the seascapes. I spent a few days working on acrylic paintings on seascapes, and doing concept sketches for other pieces. I'm very gald that I have included the concept sketches as part of the 100-day project. Days when I have less motivation ot take out the colors and the paints, I can just chill on my couch in the evening and do some composition studies. It helps me a lot to then create the final pieces, and I am not feeling like I'm "failing" the project.

A few days focusing on Seascapes!

A "long break"

Mid-March, I also took some holidays with my boyfriend, and decided not to bring any stress with me. I of course took my painting supplies, but nothing linked to the 100-day project. Breaks are important! Especially if you choose them! I came back from this trip (we went to the Alps), with tons of inspiration, and even decided to paint an abstract montain ;) (you can see it in my portfolio).

Finishing the tree-sketchbook

Coming back from the break, I decided to go all in, and finish in a few days the remaining pages of my tree sketchbook. I am so glad that I added this sketchbook to my 100-day project, as I never found the motivation to work through it without this added challenge. Also, I found so many learnings by committing to a daily practice: I played with the color palettes, with the layout on the page, etc. I managed to keep a coherent look through all the pages. 

I also started in the last pages to play with calligraphy, which is something I had wanted to do for a very long time. I bought a book on calligraphy and tried different fonts on the sketchbook. I cannot wait to play some more with that!

You can find a short tour of the whole sketchbook here.

Finally finishing the tree sketchbook!

Learnings

More than a quarter of the project done! Already I found that I have achieve so many things that I kept delaying. Having a plan really helps me finding time for art and tackling bigger project, and taking them to a satisfying point. In such a short amount of time I have already streched my creativity, and it makes me want to do mooore!

I still struggle with a lot of things though: 

- not knowing how to deal with too much inspiration. Some days, I want to do way more than 1 "planned" day in a day, and then I wonder if I should restrain myself and keep it for another day. Or wait until the light is better so that I can film it, etc.

- embracing the breaks. It is getting better, but I still tend to feel guilty when I'm not committing to a daily practice...

- finding time for all the other things in life, and especially doing other artistic things outside of the project. Even if I only spend about 20min each day on the project, I often feel like I've already eaten up all of my "creative break time" and that I have to work on my full-time job more to make up for this time.

I will try to post all of steps of the 100-day in a separate post, that I will update throughout the 100-day project. It will be like a portfolio of the project :)

UPDATE (June 2024) - I am for now on standby on the 100-day project, as I have many other things going on in life. I find it a bit hard to commit to this project every day, but I am definitely continuing this journey (and in the meanwhile I continue to do some art things ;)).