One of the wonderful things about being active online is participating in global art projects and doing it from the comfort of your own studio!

The last couple of years I’ve joined two wonderful events as a ‘repeat enthusiast’:

#21inmyartworld – it runs early in the new year and is hosted by Tara Leaver.
#the100dayproject – it starts on 31 January and is hosted by Lindsay Jean Thomson.

The concept is simple –

For the #21daysinmyartworld, you join the email notifications and follow along with the daily prompt, making art or taking an image in response and posting it on your instagram feed.

For #the100dayproject, you just need to pick a project, join the online community to receive the daily prompts and encouragement, make your art and post it on your instagram feed.

21 Days in My Art World

I thoroughly enjoyed the prompts and Tara’s kind and thoughtful emails each day of the challenge. I also got a great deal out of seeing what other artists were posting. The time period is very easy to slip into – 21 days… just 3 little weeks – and with the reflections each prompt generated, the time seems to fly past.

Here’s a sample…

Day 13 for #21daysinmyartworld challenge with @taraleaver is Process Insight…
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When I paint, I love working in layers, the laying down a variety of marks – graphite, pencils, acrylic paint, collage elements – and painting over using transparent glazes and opaque paint and then scratching back and bring some elements back in later layers.
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The process of art making reflects much of what is relevant to life in general. One of the main things with my layering is learning to trust – that the painting will find its own way and my task is to stay alert, not override where the painting wants to go. if I’m able to trust the process I will get a strong sense what I need to do next and also when the painting is finished.

The 100 Day Project

My first 100 day project was focused on colour mixing. I was doing Mark Eane’s Language of Color course and it seemed a smart move to really dive into the admixing process.

To make it feel more ‘doable’, I did 10 day blocks on a selection of 3 colours. My goal was to mix a range of palettes using the 3 colours plus black and white. As well as doing a spread of colour admixes in my studio notebook, I often felt inspired to take the mixed palettes to my sketchbook. You can see some of my posts and the colour palettes tagged in Instagram as #100daysofcolour_mwa.

At the end of my 100 day project in 2021, I did a flip through of my sketchbook pages that I had produced during the challenge. You can watch the video above.

{HINT: I didn’t get all the way to Day 100, think it was about Day 71}.

In contemplating my 100 Day Project for 2022, I decided to explore mark-making. Setting the limitation on myself that I could only work with black materials on these mini cards that I had cut out from kraft paper and punched a hole at the top.

{I found a large plastic clip so I can feed the finished cards on and it forms a transportable ‘library’ of marks.}

The mark-making materials included:

acrylic ink
acrylic paint
neo color II crayon
Derwent inktense pencil
graphite.

While most marks were directly applied, I did also included collage of dried paint from my palette and printing using foam core as my ‘printing plate’.

The last two years I have done The 100 Day Project, I have run out of steam around Day#75. Other things demand my attention and I move on. Instead of being hard on myself that I didn’t complete ‘yet another thing’… I celebrate what I gained from those 70+ days that I DID participate in.

I am going to do The 100 Day Project again this coming year. So before I dive in I wanted to share what stands out for me –

Find a project that you can see will bring important learning to your art practice – it helps to keep the motivation up.
Break down the big project / expanse of time into something more manageable for your brain, like 10 lots of 10 days.
Little and often is best.
On any given day, work with what you’ve got, don’t worry about needing more time or different materials or not getting to start.
Remember: it’s not each step {which seems small and sometimes insignificant} but what it will contribute to as part of the whole that’s important.

Have you done The 100 Day Project Challenge? What project did you do? And how did you find it? What about other great challenges that you got a lot from and could recommend? I’d love to hear…

… Michelle x