The 100 Day Project

The 100 day project is back and I am participating in it again this year. Today is the first day of the project and I have plans to do things a little differently this year.

In 2021, I painted 100 Days of Watercolour Florals. For that project I painted different flowers every day for 100 days. I kept the paintings small that year, at 4”x4”, so that I could paint them in 15 to 30 minutes. Because it was my first year, I wasn’t sure about how difficult it would be to finish the project, so keeping things as simple as possible was necessary. What I learned from this project was that I really enjoyed participating in a daily practice and I noticed that my skills improved over the 100 days. I also learned about so many different flowers during this project. It was challenging at times to come up with what flowers to paint next and I found that I had to crowd source ideas towards the end, but I made it through.

In 2022, I took what I learned from my first 100 day project and planned out my paintings a little more. That year I painted 100 Days of National Flowers. The month prior to starting the project I researched national flowers and wrote out a plan for which flowers to paint each day and what countries they are associated with. During this project I discovered that roses were the most common national flower and learned about so many orchids that I had never heard of. Because I was more confident in my second year, I made the paintings a little larger at 6”x8”. Although the paintings took a little longer to paint, I again, really enjoyed the daily practice and noticed how over the 100 paintings my technique improved.

In 2023, I took a year off of the 100 day project. I was working on some other paintings at the time and I was worried if I took on the 100 day project at that time, I would not be able to complete it.

In 2024, I took up the 100 day project again and started painting 100 Days of Garden Landscapes. I only ended up completing 50 of the 100 days last year. Part of the reason that I think that I burned out on the project last year, was that the landscape paintings took up more time than my other paintings did. There was a lot more detail involved and I was using reference photos from gardens I had photographed over the years. By day 50, I had lost interest in the project and I really wanted to paint something else, so rather than forcing it, I moved on.

This year, I have decided that I am going to paint 100 Days of Patterns. The difference with this project is that I am only going to end up with 20 patterns in the end. My plan is to paint a new pattern every 5 days and then use the subsequent days to photograph and edit the pattern on procreate. I intend on sharing the painting process and the finished pattern on social media, but the editing part I will keep to myself which may take some of the pressure off the project. I also want to give myself enough time to play with each pattern a bit without the pressure of having to produce 100 paintings.

I have wanted to take paintings and turn them into patterns for a while, so this is a fun opportunity to do this without there being too much pressure of the end result. I don’t know what I will do with these patterns at the end, but I am excited to see where it will go.

I hope you enjoy following along in this year’s project and join me on Youtube and Instagram where I will be sharing videos along the way.