100 Days of Watercolor

Lessons learned from forcing myself to paint again

Polly Adams
Sep 1, 2018 · 8 min read

Watercolor and me go way back: about to my first year of middle school. I can’t genuinely say that our relationship was a storied, star-crossed romance or a tale of hardship and betrayal. It just sort of was– Like that kid you knew, sitting on the other side of the class, who for all intents and purposes could have been your best friend if you ever had took the time to walk across the room to say hello. I remember painting color swatches and grayscales, but it soon fell to the wayside of stupidly expensive markers and acrylics. For most of my life there I sat, blankly staring at watercolor across the room, wondering if they’d ever gather up the courage to come and talk to me. April of this year I decided to be the adult in the room and go introduce myself properly.

Since then, I’ve been slowly approaching the finish line of making 100 watercolor paintings for what feels like a lifetime. The goal of the project, to make every day for 100 consecutive days, was an ambitious idea that I caught wind of on Instagram from artist and writer Elle Luna, who partnered with Lindsay Jean Thomson to launch the global art project aptly called #The100DayProject. I remember seeing others get involved in the past and pining to make art again after years of feeling too busy. It looked like there was always something in the way, whether it was school, internships, or work. This year, they launched the project at a point where I had just quit my job and was waiting to start my life over again at an office just a couple blocks away– with nothing particularly standing in the way and my idea of a new life on the horizon, I figured I had nothing better to do than at least try.

The year before, I kept putting every post I saw out of mind because I felt too bogged down by work and anxiety to commit to anything. But this time felt different: I was exhilarated about the prospect of freedom that I had for about a week before my new gig and committing to something that sounded difficult (but technically doable). Before, I was nervous about what starting really meant– I knew that if I started, it would mean that I had to finish to avoid feeling like a piece of trash. I still wasn’t sure that I could actually follow through with it, but I was just sparkly-eyed and excited enough to start painting again. It felt like the right time to test my limits and start fresh.

Of course, if I had actually achieved the original goal of painting every single day, I would have long been done with painting by now and you might have read something vaguely similar to this about a month and half ago. In reality, I’ve made 100 paintings in ~145 days, which isn’t quite as impressive but still feels like an accomplishment to me. Considering the complete 180 my life has taken from the way I was spending my free time 145 days ago, I’d call the experience somewhat revolutionary. That’s not to say that it was without struggle and long nights cursing myself for trying — because there were quite a few of those. In the end, the lowest lows punctuated the highest highs. Simply finishing turned out to be the confidence boost I needed after all. So, for anyone out there who has thought about making more art but also feels unsure about how to fit it into their lives, here are my main takeaways from making 100 watercolor paintings.

1. Change is hard, and that’s ok.

As time went on and life got in the way (as it usually does), I realized that I would need to give myself more time to get the job done. A lot actually happened in the last 5 months. On top of trying to make a painting every day, I started a new job, moved, traveled for work, went on a family vacation, fostered a dog, bought a used car, and started sleeping a lot less. I started out strong, making it about 35 days painting every single morning or evening around my new job. In all honesty, it burnt me out more than I realized at the time. I ended up spending three weeks on hiatus while we moved out of our old apartment to a new part of town. A week before we moved, I went back home for a long weekend to celebrate my mom’s retirement (yay Deb!). I remember sitting on the porch in the backyard talking to her about how I felt extremely guilty about taking so much time off, and how I worried I had lost all my momentum. Laying it all out there and seeing her expression, somewhat bemused (in typical mom fashion), made me realize I was blowing it way out of proportion. Not only did I have plenty of time and resources to get back on the horse, but I also had a lot of people cheering me on who didn’t judge me or like me any less as a person for slowing down. Lo and behold, all I heard was encouragement. The only rules standing in my way were my own, and I just had to forgive myself for breaking them and move on. Take breaks when you need them, because recharging and giving yourself space is likely just the thing that will help you more than anything.

2. Do it for you, not Instagram

Somewhere near the very end of this project (#92), I posted one wonky painting of a house that ended up getting many more likes than I had ever gotten on any post before. I spend more time than I would like scrolling on everybody’s favorite image sharing social media app, and I see plenty of people that get thousands of likes on every post. But getting more than 250 was something I hadn’t experienced — it had me on a high for about two days before it hit me like a bag of bricks labeled “stress”. A pit in my stomach started growing that told me I would never reach this online “success” again, that this was the height of my social media fame, that it was all downhill from there… I kept drawing out the last 10/100 thinking that I needed to put more time into them, they needed to be better. I thought they needed to show all my progress and garner as much love as #92, or else I was a failure. At the end of the day, I can tell you that’s definitely not true. Around #95, I realized the best thing I could do for myself was to just finish. Taking a step back to remember why I was really trying to do this was hard. It wasn’t originally supposed to be about getting likes or new followers– it was an exercise in reminding myself that I still love making art and it’s worth fitting back into my life. That’s not to say that the online encouragement didn’t help at all, because it certainly did its job of keeping me accountable to the project. But after months of constantly posting and hashtagging, I got caught up in prioritizing validation from other people over my own needs. Not every piece had to be better than the last because it was more about the process than final results. By all means, share your life, but don’t live your life just to share.

3. Some pieces will turn out better than others

At the end of the day, there’s probably about 15/100 paintings that I really like. But just because some turned out arguably better looking than others doesn’t make any of the sloppier or smaller pieces of any less value. Some things in life are worth the final result while others make up the difference in practice. There were some pieces that I poured hours into, waking up early to get started over coffee or staying up past midnight to finish. Other paintings happened in under an hour after dinner when I didn’t really have the energy to put more effort into it. Majority of everything I finished found itself somewhere in between those two ends of the spectrum and wasn’t really anything to write home about. On days where I felt stumped, I defaulted back to some sort of simple plant or fruit subject matter. If you scroll through my Instagram feed you’ll notice quite a few of those. It wasn’t easy to come up with what to paint everyday unless I had a specific image I wanted to try. Those are the ones I put the most energy into, but I think the ones I struggled with are probably more worth their weight in building skill and getting more practice. One of my biggest blockers going into this was a fear of failure, not being able to paint like I wanted to. For anyone who feels similarly, I’d say that there’s nothing quite like failing over and over again to teach you that it’s actually what you need to do first in order to get where you want to be.

4. Life’s short, find more time for what makes you happy.

It doesn’t have to happen all of a sudden, but the sooner you give it a shot the easier it will be in the long run. I spent years thinking sort of how an addict might: “It’s not that I can’t quit doing nothing. I could start making art again if I wanted to; it’s just that I don’t really have a reason to right now.” Coasting on autopilot, I used all my energy on thinking about what I could be doing instead of actually making any plans on how to do them. It wasn’t until I just tried starting this project that I realized sometimes it might be better to not have a plan at all– the most satisfying thing in the world can simply be finding something you’d like to do and following through on giving it a shot. I’ve found that freeing myself from a tangible end result gave me the chance to just enjoy myself and find the answers on my own. My advice to anyone who feels a lot of pressure to make good work or to change their life in some way would be to follow what makes your heart happy, and a plan will make itself clear.

Find me on instagram to see the full project, more watercolors down the line, and probably some other stuff in between now that I‘m finally done with my 100 paintings and can dedicate more time to baking (and eating) fun bread.

Polly Adams

Written by

designer + researcher / writer + doodler / bagel fan (www.pollylouadams.com)

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