The 100-Day Creative Challenge is one I’ve participated in several times. I like this challenge because it offers a tremendous amount of freedom. We choose what we want to do, unlike more specific challenges such as World Watercolor Month or Inktober.
This year’s challenge — the 12th annual — began on February 23, so presumably participants should finish on June 2, one hundred days later. That’s the idea, but the guidelines clearly state that it’s all right if you miss a day or two here and there. While pushing ourselves to create for one hundred consecutive days is great — and some participants surely do this — it’s still beneficial to complete 100 “days” of creative work, even if it takes us a bit longer. The challenge website says, “However many days it takes you to do your project is perfect.”
This is the sort of “freedom” I’m speaking about with this challenge. It’s fine to choose our own project, our own media, our own subject. It’s fine to stretch the days out a bit and take a little longer, if necessary. No doubt some participants probably finish their project in less than 100 days, and that’s all right, too, I suppose.
As you know if you’re a regular reader, I chose “100 Days of Shapes and Forms” — a challenge to draw geometric shapes and forms using a set of wooden blocks I recently purchased. Such forms do challenge me, so 100 days of practice would be very helpful, I figured. I was right. I have learned a lot, even if my drawings still fall short of my hopes.
What’s interesting, though, is how my attitude changes from one day to the next. There have been days when, for one reason or another, I don’t do my daily “Shapes and Forms” drawing. Maybe it’s just a busy morning, and I don’t have much time to spend in the studio. Maybe I’m involved in another art project that I’d rather work on. Maybe I just feel like “blowing it off”. It’s fine, remember.
On other days, my attitude and approach is completely different. I come to the studio with a determined attitude. I study my blocks, I do my best. I look for ways to more accurately portray what I’m seeing.
Today was one of those “challenge” days. I reached into my box of goodies and pulled out a cone and a pyramind. I could have simply placed them side by side, drawn them, and probably come away with a fairly realistic representation of these two blocks. As you can see, these two forms are approximately the same in height and width.
In the interest of challenging myself, however, I chose to position these blocks differently.
A good challenge, for sure. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to measure and draw accurately, my drawing, while close, still missed the mark a bit.
I didn’t get quite the proper angle for the pyramid, and while the cone has the correct shape, it’s much smaller than it was supposed to be — this despite my use of a ruler to measure!
Yet I’ll give myself credit for trying. I’ll give myself credit, too, for the wood-grain texture I was able to show, both on the pyramid and on the cone. And I’ll give myself credit for taking time to measure, even the results are off.
It’s a learning process, after all. Doing something — anything — for 100 days is certain to result in some improvement and by the time I reach the end, I’m sure my geometric forms will look much better than they do now. I’ve already come a good ways, and I still have a good, long ways to go.
I’ll keep challenging myself, keep working on making accurate measurements, and I’ll keep drawing these wooden blocks day after day after day.
NOTE: Feature image is courtesy of Word Press AI Image Generator.
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