What is the 100 Day Art Challenge? (Start Here)

[New Masters Academy]

Ready to jump-start your creativity? Let’s cultivate a consistent and productive creative lifestyle in 100 days, together! Bust out your pencils, paints, clay, or tablets and let’s get started.

What is the 100 Day Art Challenge?

The #100DayArtChallenge is a challenge you set for yourself, a specific artistic task you agree to complete every day for 100 days. You keep yourself accountable by posting images of your progress each day to social media and the New Masters Academy community. At the end of the 100 days, not only will you have developed a consistent creative habit, but you will have dramatically increased your skills (plus you might end up with a whole lot of work to add to your portfolio).

How do I participate in this challenge?

In order to participate in this community challenge you must:

1. Determine what your challenge will be
2. Create a new topic in this form to track your progress
3. Post to your topic each day with a photo of the day’s work
4. Encourage your fellow artists who are also sharing their progress

Determining the What and Why of Your Challenge

Your challenge should be something you can realistically complete each day. Completing a figurative sculpture in marble every day is likely not a realistic challenge.

Your challenge can be in any medium and it does not need to be a completed piece every day. A good way to formulate your challenge is using two parameters: 1) the medium, and 2) the details. Here are some examples:

• I will make line drawings of household items every day.
• I will Sculpt in marble for 15 minutes every day.
• I will make a digital illustration every day.
• I will experiment with watercolors on one page every day.

There are no rules here. Just find some small goal you can complete once a day.

You will also need to lock down WHY you are taking on this challenge. Don’t overlook this step. 100 days is a long time, and you need a reminder of why you are doing this challenge. Here are some examples of why you might choose your challenge:

• To improve my observation skills
• To master the subtleties of working with the chisel
• To develop a better sense of color harmony
• To allow myself to create without struggling with the paints

Removing Obstacles to Your Challenge

The #100DayArtChallenge is not called a challenge for nothing. It will take a lot of determination and energy to get through it. You need to think ahead and remove as many obstacles that stand in your way ahead of time as you can. Here are some tips for setting yourself up for success:

• Identify the times during your day when you can fit in your challenge. Before you get dressed in the morning? After the kids are asleep?
• Keep your materials and workspace organized and ready for action! Some days will be difficult just to find the time to do your challenge. The last thing you need is to spend 10 minutes looking for your kneaded eraser.
• Make a list of “What if” statements, where you identify how you will respond to potential obstacles. What if the kids get sick and I need to spend all day with them? What if I run out of paint? What if my internet goes down? Find solutions to these problems, before they derail your hard work.

Sharing Your Progress

The first thing you need to do when you have determined your challenge and gathered your materials is to make your topic. The title of your topic should be descriptive. Something like: “Jonny’s 100-Day Portrait Challenge”. Inside your topic, let the community know the details of your challenge, and what you are hoping to get out of it so that we can help encourage you along the way.

When you are done with your daily challenge, take a picture of your progress using your cell phone or any digital camera, then post the image to your topic, with the following information:

• The day you are one
• A sentence or two about the day’s experience
• If you cross-post to social media, make sure to use the hashtags #100DayArtChallenge #PathToMastery

[999999999z]

Really Great Challenge. So this is my goal.
1. Daily Sight-size drawing.

2. Try to complete Russian Drawing Course.

[Josseline Jeria]

This is a fantastic challenge and idea! It’ll really help to further foster our community. I’m torn between setting myself a drawing or painting challenge. I will brainstorm and share once I come up with something.

Looking forward to seeing what challenges everyone sets for themselves.

[Joshua Jacobo]

When you come up with something make a thread like I did in this forum.

[Ramona Hornung]

Amazing! Great idea to include this here!

there is nothing like a challenge to keep you motivated and growing as an artist.

would love to jump in directly, but I’m already committed to myself in a challenge for this month of April: 100HEADSin100HOURS. I post my progress on NMA Facebook page .

👍

 

[Birgith Schei]

Due to the corona crisis with spending a lot of time at home, I have allready started to paint still life paintings in acrylic. My challenge is to continue with this for 100 days. The aim is to paint the items as correct as possible, with special focus on the round elements, which I find difficult to equal. In addition I start each painting process by drawing an item without looking at the paper I write on.
The attached photo shows a 40 x 40 cm acrylic on canvas painting which I started to paint some days ago. I have to finish the tomatoes and make some corrections here and there. My plan is to get ready with this painting today.

[Joshua Jacobo]

Awesome, Birgirth!

[Dana Smith]

Love this idea! My challenge is to work for 15 minutes each day on improving my drawing accuracy. I’ll begin with learning sight-size.

[ZHI SU]

I hesitated about joining because 100 day is not a small commitment. On the other hand, 100 days are easy to slip away without much done. I’ll give it a try.

Goal: Do at least portrait or figure sketch, drawing or painting a day.

 

[John Huisman]

This is scary. But I will give it a try. Everyday I get up and think, today I will spend some time in a sketch book. Most days I fail.
I have a lot of sketchbooks. It seems like I accumulate them as if I will burn through them quickly but I probably have enough sketchbooks and drawing supplies to last a couple years at the rate I use them.
I don’t want to try to set a challenge where I would do a certain thing every day, like a face or a figure or something that might take more time than I have.
I think all I can do is to say I will spend 15 minutes in a sketchbook every day. Since most sketches or page fillings take longer than that, it might be the same page for several days in a row but I will try to post the progress shots here.
I have not finished Steve’s sketchbook course yet but what I have watched I have found to be extremely inspiring and my goal here is to just fill the pages in the hopes that I will be a better drawer at some point in the future.
I shudder to think of all the pages I will be leaving my kids to struggle over what to do with after I am gone but that will be their problem I guess. Better than antique furniture or something. At least paper you can burn or recycle.

Anyway, that is my challenge: 15 minutes in the sketchbook every day.
If I miss a day I need to make it up, (30 minutes the next day).
The goal is to become better with the sketch mediums: pencil, ink, gouache and my observations skills.
A lot of them will be figures and faces from pictures here in NMA or photos from around the house, (pictures of kids etc).
Some will be sketching from real life like sitting in my living room or in my vehicle parked somewhere.

Yikes… here we go.

 

[John Huisman]

I am not sure how to do this. I posted my first day post here and it disappeared.
It says in the initial post to post your image to topic… not sure what that means, I thought maybe we reply to our initial post but that doesn’t seem possible.
And I can’t seem to edit my original post. What am I missing?

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi @JohnHuisman

Good challenge that you have set for yourself! There is a group of us so far on the forum sharing our daily work for the challenge. Head to the 100 Art Challenge Page under the Challenges and Activities section in the NMA forum. Start a new thread in there. It takes some time for the posts with the images to come through, so wait some hours to see if it works. See you in the forum

[Dennis]

While this is a bit terrifying to me, I’m going to jump in. I’m very new to drawing (art in general), but something in my middle age, I want to get better at. I just start Glen Vilppu’s Renaissance Figure Drawing course. I will use the Daily Drawing figures to draw figures for at least 20 minutes a day timed at 1, 2 and 5 min poses.

Goal: Draw figures 20 min per day digitally using Procreate on the iPad.

[John Huisman]

I am not sure how we are supposed to do this, I was thinking we could respond to our original post but I don’t see a way to do that so i guess we are just supposed to reply to the main topic?

Above it says” post the image to your topic” but I am not sure what that means. Anyway my first post is here:
This is actually a page I started a few days ago penciling in the forms. Today I did the ink work on the face on the left. #100DayArtChallenge #PathToMastery #sketbookpages #dailysketch

I will also post here on FB page: https://www.facebook.com/John-Huisman-Woodworking-and-Art-906958619445104/

Somebody tell me if I am doing this right. (or not).

[Joshua Jacobo]

You are supposed to make your own topic/thread in the 100 Day challenge forum. Then we can follow your daily progress there 👍🏼

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