If you are an Instagram Artist, the #100 day project is familiar to you. If not, here’s the gist of it – starting this year in mid-February, if you choose to participate you choose some kind of project you will work on every day for 100 days and post whatever you did each day. Now, from there you have a lot of freedom – define it however you want, do something different each day, or work on one thing every day for 100 days, post every day, never post, whatever. The idea, at least for me is to give you a chance or focus, even if the focus is on something new, and to build that muscle that says you get better and discover your style by making every day.
So, after that intro, here was my plan. I have several tubes of gouache, for some reason (if you are any kind of maker, you understand the concept of those mystery items in your stash. I also have a bunch of old report covers for my business, back when every job required multiple printed copies. These have my branding on one side, but the other is blank and is a nice heavy cover stock. And, I need to loosen up and do some painting of some kind every day. All that combined means I chopped up those report covers into 3” x 4” pieces, and every morning I do a little painting.
There’s another layer to it as well, kind of my personal secret color palette. I’ve talked before about Louise Hay’s book Colors and Numbers – in that book is a scheme to use your birthday or calculate a number for each year, each month, and each day. Then, each number correlates to a color. That’s what I use as my color scheme. My color theme for 2022 is purple, so that is somewhere in every little painting.
On the back of each little painting, I’ve recorded the date, then the color code, then a word or phrase or two that come to me.
I’m about a third of the way through. Some pieces are landscapes, some are just patterns. Some are better than others. I don’t post all of them, because I can’t imagine anyone would want to see each one, but from time to time I pick out a selection.
The important thing is that it’s working – just these 20 minutes of painting are becoming routine, I’m learning about a new medium that is beautifully portable, and that big stack of old report covers is finding new life.