Yes, I’ll Be Doing This Again

The 2022 “100-Day Project” is set to begin on February 13th, ten days from now. What is the 100-Day Project? It’s simply a creative adventure in which participants commit to doing something — anything — consistently. For some, it’s drawing a particular subject, such as “a face a day”. Others might write a short poem, complete an art journal page, or do any one of thousands of other possible activities.

This will be my third year of participating in the project. It took me a while to decide precisely what I’ll be doing, but I finally made a decision, and I’m looking forward to participating this year. Of course, I always keep my “participation” limited. I don’t post online every day, nor have I joined any of the “community groups” involved with the event.

I hesitate to call the “100-Day Project” a challenge, because it’s meant to be empowering, not intimidating (as challenges so often are.) The intent is to encourage creativity and consistency, to help establish routines in which creativity plays a role. The guidelines, in fact, say that whatever we choose to do — and the choice for a project is entirely our own — it should take no more than 5 or 10 minutes.

The creative projects I’ve done in the past have involved reading, learning, and practicing various art techniques. Two years ago, I went through a watercolor “how-to” book by Aubrey Phillips during the 100-Day Project. Last year I went through an oil-painting book by Carolyn Lewis to learn techniques for adding mood and atmosphere to my landscape paintings.

This year, however, I wanted to move away from any “textbook” project and do something very different.  I did consider reading about art history in general, choosing one artist per day to learn about, or reading a biography of a particular artist. Reading is fun, yes, but I realized I wanted to do  something more “hands-on”.

Another thought was using a variety of “silly art prompts” to create mythical creatures or crazy sketches. There are a number of “art games” available that provide prompts like this, and the idea had a certain appeal.  But do I really want to focus on being silly for 100 days? No, I don’t think so.

I browsed around a bit, thought about different media, and all the while something was lurking in the back of my mind. Finally, I looked it up, and I knew that this was what I wanted for my 2022 “100-Day Project”. It’s neurographic art, and probably you’ve heard about it before. It was developed back in 2014 by Russian psychologist, architect, and creativity “entrepreneur” Pavel Piskarev. A quick introduction can be found here: Neurographic Art Lessons.

For me, this is one of those “odd things” that so often happen. Neurographic art has been around for years, but I had never once heard of it, read about it, or seen it. And then, suddenly, within the span of the last week or so, everywhere I’ve turned, I’ve come across neurographic art. I’ve seen it on Facebook, I’ve had advertisements about it popping up, I’ve heard it mentioned by several artists. Now, after looking it up today, I know what it is, and I’ve decided that this will be the basis for my 100-Day Project this year.

There are many different videos online that show the process for creating neurographic art. Here is one that clearly explains how it’s done:

It’s somewhat similar to the “Alien Eyeballs” doodle I made recently, although I wasn’t following any rules or “algorithms”.  I was just making lots of loopy lines and coloring them in.

I like the idea of doing neurographic art for this 100-Day Project because:

• It’s simple
• It’s colorful
• It’s not time-consuming

I’ll be doing this on inexpensive watercolor paper. Most likely I’ll be using my “Mermaid” markers, as well as various watercolors and gansai. I think it will be fun.

Will you be taking part in the 100-Day Project? Here’s a quick FAQ about the project. You can also visit the official project website for additional information or to sign up for their newsletter. If you do choose to participate, please let me know and I’ll be happy to share links to your blog!