The 100 Day Project is starting this Sunday, on 22 February 2026, and after much deliberation, I’ve finally come up with my project — 100 Days of Play!
Part of me wanted to do 100 days of art journaling again this year. But I have a lot of unfinished projects floating around the studio and some ideas for other mixed media projects.
I’ve also realized that there’s a part of me that wants to be “more serious” about my art practice, now that I have more time for it. But there’s a bigger part of me that doesn’t want anything to do with “serious”. These two parts have been having a tug of war, and I think it’s time I got them to bury the hatchet, so to speak!
So…I’m going into these 100 days with beginner’s mind and some playful experimentation.
I have no expectations from my art. I’m not hoping for pretty art or the emergence of a new style or new direction in my work. Some experiments may work better than others, and that’s the entire point of these 100 days.
I simply want to show up and re-connect with the joy of playing with paint, scissors, and glue, experimenting with some of the supplies I bought with great excitement and then rarely used {I’m looking at you, graphite powder!}
There’s also a bit of a risk with a project that isn’t too clearly defined.
In 2020, I had decided to do 100 days of creative explorations. That was also an open-ended project. I wanted to try different ideas and techniques, new ways of using materials, a deeper exploration of mark making. But that fizzled out very quickly.
Looking back, I thought it was because of the very open-ended parameters of the project. But 2020 me and 2026 me are in very different places, mentally, so I’m hoping that this open-ended project will work better for me this year. Fingers crossed!
I’m aiming for at least 15 minutes of play every day, though I suspect I will end up painting a lot longer than that!
I’ll probably share some snippets from my session over on Instagram occasionally, but I will try and post regular updates here. Bookmark this page if you’d like to follow along with my journey — I’ll link all the updates here once they go live.
Are you doing the 100 day project? Lemme know in the comments!