Halfway to 100

I’m more than halfway through my 100 day project and I wanted to share a few things that I have been thinking about over the last 60+ days. I’ve been great about posting daily to social media (and horrible about posting here) but what might look easy on Instagram has been anything but. Here are three things I have (re)learned during the first half of this project.

It is harder than I thought.
I went into this project knowing it would be hard. After all, I tried (and failed) to do 100 days of tiny collages last year. I thought the problem was my choice of subject matter – I don’t usually do collage so of course I couldn’t do 100.

This year, I thought very hard about what my project would be. I wanted it to be something easy without too many restrictions that I could fit into my busy day. Something with enough of a box around it that what I did would be cohesive. Two-color characters seemed easy enough. Except it’s not.

Which leads me to my next revelation…

I get bored easily.
I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes of other people’s 100 day projects, but I have found this project to incite terrible boredom. I thought it would allow me to experiment and push myself – and in some ways it has – but mostly I feel like I am doing the same thing over and over again. When it gets too repetitive and I get bored with how everything looks, I try to reinvent my project within the bounds of the restrictions. If you look at the 60+ drawings I’ve done so far you can see periods of sameness and then a change to some different style or idea. Which has meant…

I had to let go of my preconceived idea of what the result would be.
When I started this project I thought everything I drew would be the same style and when I was finished I would have a wonderfully cohesive collection of characters that was in line with some of my favorite 100 day projects friends of mine have done.

I lasted about 5 days before I had to change things up. It felt like I was “cheating” or ruining my project by changing to a different style, but it was the only way to keep myself engaged enough to continue.

So, would I do it again?

Halfway through my answer to this is: Maybe? On the one hand it has been a terribly frustrating exercise for me. On the other hand I can’t help but wonder if I gave myself a subject matter restriction (animals) vs. a technique restriction (two-color) I would be having more fun. Then again 31 days of mermaids almost killed me so perhaps I’m just not cut out for repetitive projects.