100-day project review 8.1.2019

In June, I completed a 100-day project. Every day for 100 days in a row, I completed a self portrait. You can see all of the self portraits by following this link.

Before the project began, I came up with 42 different ideas for self portraits. You can see that list here. And as the project went on, I came up with even more ideas, but ended up using some techniques several times to make it through 100 days.

There weren’t many negatives to this project. Some days I had a lot of time on my hands, so I could complete 2 or even 3 a day, and that gave me the option to skip a day if needed, so I never felt pressured. And sometimes I spent 10 minutes on a portrait, while others took hours, so the time spent all worked out.

Positives:

• a more organized drawing table and tools
• able to try out drawing techniques I’d never tried before
• helped start a habit of drawing and painting
• came up with drawing techniques that I quite enjoy
• sparked my creativity
• getting to know my own face!

Here are my top ten self portraits, in no particular order.

This is a continuous line drawing, and I love the shapes that were created by never lifting the pencil off the paper.

Here’s a collage that I made from an old atlas. Again, I love the shapes created, along with the uneven white lines that appear between the shapes.

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These three are similar. I started off with a portrait done in pencil, highlighting the lines and contours of my face. I liked that pencil drawing so much that I created a few watercolors based on the same method.

This was created by tracing a photo of my face, then painting layers of yellow, red and blue watercolor.

Here’s another watercolor focused on the lines and contours of my face. I added black ink to define the shapes.

I love this one! I love the primitive quality of the drawing, and I loved creating it, using oil pastel and china marker.

Here’s another primitive-like drawing in oil pastel and china marker. And I like the words.

And this is a blind contour of my face drawn with a felt-tip pen, then I used a wet paintbrush to draw over the lines. I find the line quality lovely.

I hope and plan to maintain this habit of drawing and painting. Not necessarily every single day, but at least 4 out of 7 days each week. Now to balance that with my ceramics! 🙂

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