Inside My Studio: 100 Day Project 2016 Is In The Books

I wrapped up the 2016 edition of The 100 Day Project at the end of July and, just like last year, it was a terrific experience that served to remind me of many of the lessons I learned in 2015.

I didn’t blog about it much here because, let’s be frank, I haven’t blogged much about anything this year – although I am trying to be consistent and post once a week!  But, I stuck with it and didn’t miss a single day, despite travelling and a busy work schedule.

While I made some changes this year, I stuck with my basic premise of doing a 10 minute doodle every day.  This year though, I decided to do them on individual 4×4 Strathmore art tiles – a decision I wound up being super happy with – instead of in a sketchbook.

I originally said I did this to make it easier to travel but, I had other ideas in the back of my head as well:

• The tiles make it really easy if I want to gift any of the doodles, which I initially thought I might do but, the reality is, I’m kind of attached to all of them
• Because they’re only 4×4, it kept me from getting carried away and accidentally going too big and thereby not able to finish in 10 minutes
• I have an idea to bind them into a little book if I can find some art supplies that will make that doable.  I think it would be cool to create a little book for each year and have a record of them that I can flip through
• I can post my favourites up on a cork board in my office and swap them out when I get bored!  I can even frame a few if I feel like it
• I just thought it would be really cool after 100 days to lay 100 tiles out on the floor in a 10×10 grid and look at them.  And it was.

Enter Miss Doodle

Miss Doodle, as I have affectionately named her, is the little mini-me that appears in many of my 10 minute doodles.  She first popped up in 2015 but she definitely made her presence felt much more this year.  She chopped off all her hair, just like I did.  She’s gone from a red dress to a blue one so that she could wear her blue chucks every day (as I pretty much do – although I rarely wear dresses).

She’s become my little alter ego.  Overall, she’s a much brighter, light-hearted version of me but, generally speaking, we like a lot of the same things and go to a lot of the same places.  Her goal is simply to inject colour and happiness into people’s daily lives and I realized doing this year’s project, that really, that’s my goal too.  Life should be full of colour and creativity and fun.  And I’m at my very happiest when I am making that happen and when I can cheer other people up by sharing it with them.

Miss Doodle really brought that into clarity around the 60 day mark for me and she became even more prominent over the last 40 days.  So I have plans for her because frankly, she’s been asking for more things to do.  While I don’t think I’ll do another 100 Days till 2017, she will still pop up here, there and everywhere and I have a feeling, she may even wind up in a little book of her own – she has ideas, that one.  Big ideas!