100-days project © Claudia Retter
At the end of March I thought it would be fun to try my hand at a 100-days project (read that post here). A writer & artist whose newsletter I subscribe to launched her own 100-days project as a way to mark time during her cancer treatment. She invited anyone to join her with a project of their own. I thought I’d give it a go with some sketching.
Ooof I knew i wouldn’t make it through, but there’s something to be said for forging ahead anyway. And so I think, did I doom my efforts from the start by not really believing I could do it? But I think it’s more that I had a faulty plan B. I thought I had built in a failsafe: On days when I didn’t really feel inspired to draw, or if I put it off until waaayy too late at night when I was too tired, I was allowed to draw stick figures or even just make random marks on the page. It didn’t have to be a “sketch.”
The trouble was that I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I envisioned the rest of my book filled with stick figures and halfhearted doodles and it just filled me with dread. Why spend energy agonizing over drawing something just to fill a self-imposed quota? So that was the end of that. It felt soooo satisfying to let it go.
I will say though, that when I open this little book to the 16 drawings I did make, I feel really proud of myself. They marked little moments in time, and it makes me happy to see them. My first sketch was of leaves I saw in the snow while walking on our land in Vermont for the first time. I drew the neighbor’s barn through the trees. The view across the road.
Three leaves in the snow.
Barn through the pines.
There’s a doodle of an idea I have for an art project. And a sewing project. And a drawing of things in the blind school art classroom. There’s also the Walgreens bandaid that covered my covid booster shot— I drew that late one night when I was scrambling for something to draw, and I thought it was ridiculous at the time but now I love it.
So I guess this project wasn’t for nothing. No, I didn’t finish my 100 days, but it wasn’t a “failure” — whatever that even is. I liked keeping this tiny notebook with me, and it makes me wonder about carrying it around again without the pressure of a daily quota. It’s different than a journal. Maybe it’s a sketch or maybe it’s ideas for a project. Or words about something. A place to remember the small-big things when they appear to me.
Bob, the papier mache robot at OSSB
Paper fish at OSSB
Walgreens bandaid