HOW I GROW MY FOLLOWING & FOUND MY ART STYLE
MY TOP TIPS FOR DOING The 100 day challenge
Back in 2019 I was longing to do something creative. After being on maternity leave for a year, I was needing something to get me back in the game and to find my confidence again.
I came across others on Instagram undertaking drawing projects. I thought it was such a fun idea to get myself back into mark making again, so I decided to jump head first into the 100 day challenge.
We have all heard the saying ‘practice makes perfect’ and by making more art regularly you can evolve your art style into something you are truly proud of and want to share with the world.
The 100 day challenge is an amazing way to achieve this, by doing one small thing a day for 100 days helps you to develop and refine your style of your chosen craft and it can help you move closer day by day to your big dreams and goals.
I can highly recommended setting this challenge for yourself if you want to find your unique art style or if you are trying to achieve a big goal. There really are no set rules apart from doing the project everyday.
TIPS FOR GETTING STARTED
Choosing a smallish art dairy A6 or A5 so the project is achievable even on busy days. If life does get busy, don’t get discouraged if you miss a day, just jump back into it the next day (but try not to miss two days in a row). Consistency is key to keeping your momentum moving forward.
If 100 days feels too overwhelming you could start with a 7day or 30day project. But I do highly recommend 100 days to really find yourself in your work, it also gives you time to explore and have fun.
Share your project on social media & use hashtags like #100daychallenge #the100dayproject #the100daychallenge. You could also create your own hashtag that no one else is using to make it easy to view your whole project.
I think it helps if you set some guidelines (rules) for yourself to help make the project more refined and so you don’t get overwhelmed by ‘100 days’.
Some ideas for your project could be:
Focusing on one thing to draw ie. flowers, patterns, landscape, portrait, plants or something that happened in your day.
Drawing with one medium ie. black ink pen, paint pens, watercolour or digital (iPad).
Play around with different mediums each day to find your favourite.
Limiting colours or making a colour palette at the beginning to work from to make it look & feel cohesive.
Set a time limit ie. 15 or 30 mins.
Simple line drawings.
SHARE YOUR WORK
Before starting my 100 day challenge I had never really shared my work on Instagram before as I aways had some kind of self doubt or imposter syndrome going on in my head. So sharing my work was really hard for me, but once I started I got such a surprise when people stared following along, showing their support and interested in what I was doing and following my creative journey.
I grew my following to 14k by just posting consistently and using hashtags, I was having fun & the encouragement from this newly found community blew me away. It was nothing I had ever experienced before not even in my 18 years in the fashion industry.
So my message today is CREATE MORE & SHARE MORE
See my final post from my 100 day project here
I hope this has inspired you to try out doing your own project. Let me know below if you start one, I'd love to support you and follow you on your journey.
