100 days, 100 drawings
Letting go of expectation and remembering the pleasure of creativity
Last week I finished my second 100-day challenge. A friend of mine is an evangelist for these (she just completed her 13th!) and turned a few of us into converts. It’s a simple concept: you pick a creative pursuit that you can do every single day for 100 days. Each day has to be a standalone effort and you have to share it with the group. The idea is that you’re focused more on the process than a perfect outcome. You show up every day, whether you want to or not, and you do it.
I failed my first attempt (photography) and barely finished my fall back (writing), so this time I went with something I felt no pressure to be “good” at: drawing. I kept my drawings to a single scene or object. I got into the habit of waking up, making coffee, and snuggling with the dog on the couch while I drew. It kept me off my phone and gave me a chance to make something for myself (albeit something small) every day.
Eventually a few trends emerged: my dog, plants, food, movies, buildings, people. Nothing particularly memorable on its own, but I love the visual diary they create. Anyone looking at these would rightfully call them amateur, but the process of making them was about more than my technical skill (or lack thereof).
Some time in college, after my last creative writing class (a poetry class…how I would love to get my hands on those poems, I might cringe to death) I let the creative part of myself go dormant. Most of my spare time was devoted to partying, and what brain power remained was dedicated to churning out papers about other people’s art. I critiqued, I analyzed, I found “gaps in the literature”, but I didn’t create anything myself. That’s how it happens, I think.
We all start off as magical, creative beings. Then responsibility infringes. Time passes, then more, until we forget how to access that part of ourselves, forget how beautiful the world can be, how beautiful we can help make it. It’s a practice, like anything else, and it gets harder to shake off the dust the longer we let it gather — harder, but not impossible. Once we get started, it gets easier and builds its own momentum. Eventually it gets baked into our baseline and becomes another thing we do, another thing that makes us us. One day we wake up and remember: oh yeah, I am an artist.
Being human can sometimes feel like a raw deal, aware as we are of all the horrible shit that goes on in the world, our inability to do much about it, and how it all ends (if not the particulars, just the unavoidable fact that it does, indeed, end). But for all the suffering we cause, witness, and endure, one constant throughout our time here is our urge to connect with each other, often through our art.
We sing, we write, we dance, we paint, we gather experiences that make us feel, and we share them. We try to capture some small snapshot of who we are — that intangible, unknowable self — and we share it. Know me, see me, understand me, forgive me, love me, we say. And it works! How crazy. We know that none of it really matters but we also know it’s among the most important things we can do with our lives.
Anyway, back to 100 days. When I started this round, I often included some kind of disclaimer around my project whenever it came up:
I’m no artist, but…
I can’t really draw, but…
Oh, it’s just a silly thing…
Eventually I stopped doing that. Not because I uncovered some previously unrealized artistic talent. Maybe my skills have gotten a touch better than they were at the start. Maybe I’ve regained some control over the finer muscles in my hand, much more used to typing and swiping than drawing or writing these days. But that’s not really the point. Technical skill is one thing and there’s absolutely a spectrum (I know what end of it I’m on). Technical skills aren’t the only thing that matter. They’re not even the most important thing. But we’ve all had an experience with a work of art that left us cold despite being technically perfect.
We are messy, imperfect beings and so is our art — that’s what makes it ours. That’s the crack in the facade that allows others to gain a foothold and find their way in. It’s why vibrations in the air or colors on a canvas or pictures on a screen can bring us to tears or rage or laughter. It’s why we smile like lovestruck dopes during a well-executed meet cute or throw our bodies around in a dark, crowded music venue, feeding off each other's energy. It’s why one person’s voice ringing out over a hushed crowd of thousands gives us goosebumps.
The messiness of it all is what lets us take someone else’s art and make it our own. We come to think of complete strangers, sometimes long dead, as though they understand our deepest, most intimate secrets and scars. It fuels endless online debate which, tiring though it is, is possible only because we care. We have expectations of our art and the tacit pact of vulnerability and trust we make with its creators.
It’s why we often use other people’s art to strengthen our own relationships. I think you’ll really like this. This reminded me of you. Oh my god, this is my favorite too. We can’t fully know another person, I don’t think we can fully know ourselves, but the art we make might be the closest we can come.
By opening ourselves up to another person’s art, we learn to draw on their wisdom and experience. We learn that, against all odds, we’ll get over that devastating loss, that painful betrayal, that broken heart. We learn to appreciate and savor the beauty in the more mundane, ephemeral moments. We learn that part of the beauty is that it’s fleeting, we’re fleeting. We learn that even monsters are capable of beauty, that we’re all part monster, and yet we’re still loved, still capable of leaving a beautiful mark.
Last week I wrote about how I become enamored with beginnings, to the point where I often fail to actually start anything. These two rounds of the 100-day project have been such a useful exercise in getting the ball rolling and sticking with it. They’ve been tiny things, small projects with no real goal beyond the doing of the thing itself. I didn’t get a writing gig off my first round; my small drawings won’t be hung in any museum. And that’s fine, that’s good even. What this challenge did was help me remember that I don’t need to create a masterpiece for it to have been a worthwhile endeavor. The real reward is the way creating something, anything, makes me feel.
The past few months have helped me remember who I used to be who I am. A mop-headed kid, sitting at the kitchen table in a complete trance for hours, surrounded by construction paper, scissors, glue, markers, crayons, googly eyes, stencils, pencils, and whatever else I could find, lost in the joy of creating. And for what? To show my parents (mm, very nice) or my siblings (get out of my room) or, best case scenario, my friends (cool! let’s make something together).
Maybe a few of these early creations were stuck to the fridge for a while before being stuck in a plastic bin, sitting now somewhere in my mom’s attic. But the real magic — that basic, unruly urge to create and, not only that, to share — is still alive and well within me, it just needed to be invited out to stretch its legs.
This week’s song on repeat:
If the sun comes up and I still don't wanna stagger home
Then it's the memory of our betters
That are keeping us on our feet
You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan
And the next five years trying to be with your friends again
Oh this was so delightful to read and witness. Thanks for sharing, I’m feeling inspired for a 100 day challenge now!