This is the 3rd year I’ve decided to the 100 day project. The 100 day project, if you’re not familiar, is a challenge to do something of your choosing for 100 days. It could be drawing, writing, photography. It doesn’t have to be a long stretch of time, either, even 5 minutes is fine simply because you are doing it.
The last two years I chose writing as my daily project but this year I decided to focus on a course I signed up for in the fall of 2024, Ioana Pioaru’s Drawing Flowers with Ink on Paper Course.
I finished the first module in mid-December and I have been wanting to work on the second module since then. I figured this would be a good thing for to focus on for 100 days since I really want to finish the course.
This image, from the second module of the course, is proving to be pretty tough.
It is a photo of a white rhododendron backlit from the sun to get us to focus on light. I am 8 days into the project and I haven’t even finished the first rough sketch you create before you even start the final!
The drawings start out with creating some small loose sketches to get a feel for the image and the darker and lighter areas. You then move on to sketch an outline of the flower on a full sheet of paper. This will just be an outline that you will use to create the image on a higher quality paper.
There have been a few days where I haven’t spent a lot of time but this flower is hard. I am wondering if this is too advanced? or I’m not good enough or patient enough to do this?
At the end of the first week, the woman running the project sent some round up questions for us doing the project to consider.
How many days did you do the project? 7
What are you learning? How to draw what I’m seeing as opposed to what I think I see – in other words, shapes, light and shadow as opposed to that’s a leaf. Also, relearning that drawing takes a bit of time and concentration
How are you feeling? Truthfully, I can get annoyed at having to do something every day, even when I’m the one who chose to do it but on the whole, I am feeling content that I am making/creating art! Not letting an online class languish and not get done! Also, surprised at my motivation – may it continue.
Do you want to make any adjustments to your project parameters? Not yet. Maybe after I finish this drawing I might need to do a different creative act for a few days to take a break.
There is a Facebook group for the project and each day there is a new post for each day to post your work. I was posting every day but I didn’t do it on Saturday even though I took the picture to do it. I realized I am not too interested in that part, at least not every day. Maybe I’ll just do a weekly round up post going forward.
