One Sunday afternoon I was listening to an episode of Art Juice. They had an interview with Lindsay Jean Thomson, and they were talking about the 100 day project. I hadn’t heard of this before but it grabbed my attention.
The date was 31 January 2021 and the UK was in the middle of lockdown #3 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. During this past year I’ve completed a few art courses and art projects and they have really kept me focussed. But I was in need of a new challenge, perhaps this could be it?
So, what is the 100 day project?
The 100 day project was first created by designer Michael Beirut (you can read about the original project here). The idea is a simple one:
- Choose a creative project
- Do it everyday for 100 days
- Share your progress online
I realised I was listening to the podcast on day #1 of the 100 day project! Oh well, if I was going to do it I had no time to overthink it, just pick something and start – TODAY.
Thankfully, an idea came to me rather quickly.
My 100 day project
I have been dabbling again with printmaking recently (having studied printed textiles at Uni, the printing seed had already been firmly planted!) And I have been collecting a variety of printmaking tools and equipment that I wanted to use one day.
For my 100 day project, my first thought was to ‘MAKE a print everyday’. But I quickly dismissed this as I could end up putting too much pressure on myself to ‘make a GOOD print everyday’. Instead, I realised, I just wanted to play and experiment and to see what marks I could make…so I decided to ‘print SOMETHING everyday’. This way if I did a potato print or a hand print I had still met my intention. No pressure.
I then thought 100 days…wow, that could feel like a long time. After reading about people who had done the challenge before, they spoke about getting bored and giving up. As I have no desire to do either I decided to break down the 100 days into 10 mini projects. This way I could choose 10 different printing methods and spend 10 days exploring each one.
It was also suggested to find a unique hashtag to use on Instagram, so all of your project could be saved in one place.
#100daysofmarkmakingwithprint is the hashtag I chose.
Days 1-10: lino printing
For the first 10 days I chose lino printing. As I had no time to prepare I found a few lino cuts that I had previously made. I had only used them to make rubbings for collage, so I’d never actually printed with them!
Also, for speed (and as they were quite small) I used an ink pad, which I use for stamping, to print with and tested one out in my sketchbook. The printed mark is so beautiful…it has its own aesthetic which I love.
These are a few of the lino prints I did:
I’ll be sharing my thoughts and discoveries in future blog posts. In the meantime you can follow my daily progress on Instagram @jobund or via #100daysofmarkmakingwithprint
One Reply to “#the100dayproject”