100 Days of Creativity: What You Can Learn from Making Tiny Art Every Day
This is part two (of two) of my blog posts on my 2025 100 Day Project. Check out part one: Supplies, Strategies and Mindset for a 100 Day Project.
100 Day Projects will test you in many ways. There will be days when you do not want to work on your project, days when you literally cannot due to other obligations, and lots of days where whatever you produce is less than you were hoping for. But that is the point. The point is not what you produce on those perfect and ideal days, where there is enough synergy that things go according to plan. The goal is to see what you can produce when things go haywire, when you miss a day, when you have a slump, when the results are all poor. Even when things seem like they are just going terribly, you are still learning something, and you are showing yourself that you can stick to something even when it is difficult. Here are the seven things that I have learned over the course of this project. I’ve also included some logistical tips at the end to help you when you dive into your own 100 Day Project.
If you want to see more images from this 100 Day Project and know about future projects, make sure to follow my on Instagram at jgagnondesigns.
1. I love drawing on tiny paper.
At the beginning of this project, I had a hard time believing that I could create anything interesting on only a 1 x 1 inch piece of paper. Due to this belief, my first stack of cut paper included a large range of sizes, including some as large as 3 x 5 and 4 x 6 inches. But the more drawings I completed, the more I enjoyed the smaller sizes of paper. The small size meant that I was rarely spending more than five minutes on a drawing. In fact, I would say that the average time I spent drawing was only 2-3 minutes. This meant that even on my most tired days, I could usually motivate myself to complete at least a simple drawing. Sometimes I did have to drag my butt out of bed. Sometimes I made up for a missed day by drawing two. This small size also made it incredibly easy to travel and take my project with me. All I needed was my envelope and a pen.
By the end of my 100 days, the majority of my drawings were completed on the smallest 1 x 1 inch squares. Even when I did deviate from that small size, the “largest” drawings I created were 1 x 3 inches. While the tiny squares were my favorite, sometimes I just wanted a change or I had a particular composition in mind that would work better on a rectangle piece of paper rather than a square. At the end of the month, the variety in sizes also made it more fun to arrange all of the tiny squares into a larger composition for the month.
2. The project as a whole was more important than individual drawings.
The more and more drawings I created, the less worried I was about creating a good drawing. I was not always in love with the final product, but I knew that I had so many drawings ahead of me. If I wanted to try the idea again, I could, or I could just move on to whatever idea I was most interested in the next day. Even when I had a “bad” drawing, once you arranged all of the tiles together from a month, you really do not notice any particular drawing. If anything, you found yourself having favorites that your eye would gravitate towards the most.
January tiny drawings.
February tiny drawings.
3. Working in pen was freeing.
I deliberately chose to work in pen because I could not erase mistakes. I knew that if I had the option to erase, I would overthink my lines, composition, theme and most likely spend too much time adjusting and tweaking. Working in pen there was no going back, just forward. So if I made a wonky line, or chose the wrong line weight for the idea I had, I just had to make it work. The more drawings I created, the easier it was to just start, adjust on the fly, and keep going until the end.
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4. Missing a day was not a big deal.
I have 100 finished drawings and I have a drawing for each day of the calendar from January 1 to April 10, 2025. But not all of those drawings were necessarily drawn on the day that is written on the back of them, because, you know, life happens. Certainly the majority of them were completed on the day they are dated, but not all, and I decided that was perfectly fine. Most of the time, if I missed a day it was often because I legitimately forgot all about it. Sometimes it ended up giving me a fun way to make two drawings that specifically went together.
5. Rarely recording my process was liberating.
Now that I am trying to build an art business, my brain is often in content creation mode all the time. I’m thinking about how I can document my process so that I can share it on my website or Instagram. For this project, I rarely recorded myself drawing. I rarely took pictures of my finished drawings, until the project was well under way and I knew I would finish. It was a meditative process that I could (usually) look forward to each day. I didn’t want to record most days and so I didn’t.
6. Picking a theme was really helpful.
The constant element in all of my drawings was trees. Sometimes it was one tree. Sometimes there were many trees. Sometimes the trees were a part of a larger landscape. Sometimes the focus was the tree itself. Sometimes it was just the top of the tree. Sometimes it was just the base of the tree. I drew pine trees. I drew deciduous trees. I drew trees with leaves. I drew trees without leaves. Sometimes I drew a tree that I actually saw somewhere. Sometimes I drew a tree that was completely imaginary. But there was always some connection to a tree. This was one of the best parts of the project because I could draw from life or I could draw from my imagination and I’m probably the only one who knows which is which when you look at the final drawings. Having a theme also made it so much easier to sit down and draw each day. I knew that if I was really struggling on any given day that I could just draw another imaginary pine tree. And I did do that, a lot. But I also became so much more confident in experimenting with different kinds of trees, both from real life and from my imagination.
7. Choosing a theme that I could see in real life was incredibly helpful.
Maybe this is not true where you live, but I am surrounded by trees here in Colorado. There are trees just outside of my apartment complex surrounding my parking lot. There are trees in the park where I like to run and ride my bike. There are trees along the creek path where I work. And of course there are lots of trees when Vasya and I go for hikes. I found myself noticing all of the variety of trees in my daily life and that closer observation inevitably made it into my drawings. So many of my tiles are a little documentation of a place that I have been over the last few months. Trees are all unique and I enjoyed drawing wonky trees as much as I did drawing seemingly perfect trees. I found myself taking pictures of trees that I really liked that I could draw later if I wanted to. I found myself noticing details such as the trunk, the pine needles, dead branches, textures, and so much more. I found that these observations skills and drawing techniques have started to make their way into my paintings. I am having more ideas for compositions based on the world I am seeing around me. It has made painting landscapes even more interesting.
Logistical Tips That Also Helped
Pre-cut all of your paper. My envelope was always stocked with plenty of pieces of paper so that there was no excuse not to start. I think I cut paper three times over the course of the whole project.
My envelope was front and center on my desk so it was easy to see and therefore hard to avoid.
My envelope and tracker to know what number drawing I was on.
Smaller envelopes with January and February’s completed drawings and March in progress.
Once I got past January, it was harder to keep track of which numbered drawing I was on. To help, I created a little index card that listed all of the days for the month and the number of drawings I was on. When I finished drawing, I got to cross off a day on the index card, which was always a nice little dopamine hit.
When I finished a month of drawings, I removed them from my working envelope so that it felt like I was starting the month fresh. It was also fun to have smaller envelopes start to accumulate.
What’s Next?
I was not sure where this project would take me when I started on January first. At the time, my first goal was just to get through the week, and then the month, and then the next month. This is my first successful 100 Day Project and I think that it is because it was so easy. I juggle a lot every day: my day job, my art practice, exercise and healthy eating, my social life, like we all do. I knew that I only had a certain amount of time to dedicate to my project, so I accepted what my limitations were going to be instead of fighting them. Initially I thought I might keep it up for the whole year, but I was feeling very ready to be done as I got close to the end of the 100 days. As much as I have loved my tiny black and white minis, spring is in the air and summer is fast approaching and my fingers are itching for colorful paint. I am contemplating another project for over the summer, but that is often my busiest time of year. If I want to be successful, I know I will need to make sure it is another easy project to stick with.