Perfectionism · the page that has to be good

Permission for a hundred mediocre drawings

The rule that every day must produce something worth keeping is the rule that ends the project around day twenty. Here the day is closed by a report, and the report does not ask how it looks.

The standard is what breaks, not the discipline

what perfectionism costs

A drawing that goes wrong takes the evening with itTwenty minutes in, the page is not working, and the sensible move is to stop. Do that four times and the practice is finished.
Pressure on the outcome is a documented reason these projects collapseArtists reviewing their own failed hundred days name it directly: the insistence that the work be good every single day.
Nothing gets started because nothing is readyThe right subject, the right paper, a clear head. The conditions for a good drawing are rarely available on a Wednesday.

pinned up

A hundred days of lowering the bar on purpose

the hands
the hands
the hands
the hands
the hands
the hands
the hands

The day is closed by a report, not by a result

how it runs

01 Tasks stated as actions, not outcomes Twenty minutes of hands, five thumbnails, one page of colour tests. Each one can be completed badly and still be completed.
02 The report records the fact, not the quality You write what you did. There is no field for how it turned out, because that field is what stops people.
03 Nobody in the room is grading No critique, no assessment, no feedback round. The group exists so the day is witnessed, and witnessing is not judging.

the shape of it

A hundred days of lowering the bar on purpose

frame 1

The hardest part is writing tasks small and dull enough to finish. Ambition here is the failure mode, not the fuel.

drag the strip sideways

Day 1–10

The hardest part is writing tasks small and dull enough to finish. Ambition here is the failure mode, not the fuel.

Day 30

The first genuinely bad page that you report anyway. After that one, most of the pressure has nowhere left to sit.

Day 100

A sketchbook that is mostly ordinary, with the handful of good pages that only exist because the ordinary ones were allowed.

in pictures

A hundred days of lowering the bar on purpose

the table

the table8 photos in the gallery

the hands

the hands9 photos in the gallery

the room

the room8 photos in the gallery

the pages

the pages9 photos in the gallery

documented, not invented

Named by artists reviewing their own failed attempts

—
A working artist listing why her 100-day projects fell apart puts too much pressure on the outcome first, and singles out the belief that the work had to be good every single day. source
—
A daily-drawing writer describes a single missed day reading as proof of personal failure, and concludes that a challenge doing that to you is not worth keeping. source

Each claim links to the page it came from. We paraphrase; we do not reproduce wording we have not checked at the source.

before you sign up

Questions worth asking

What if the drawing is bad?

You report that you drew. The programme has no mechanism for evaluating the page, which is the point of it.

Will I improve over a hundred days?

We do not promise that and we do not teach. What the format produces is a hundred days on which drawing happened; what that does for your work is yours to judge.

Can I abandon a drawing halfway?

Yes. An abandoned page is a completed task if the task was to spend the time.

Does anyone see my work?

Only if you choose to show it. The report is text, and no image is expected.

What if I miss a day?

You write the miss into the report. Missing is part of a hundred days, not the end of them.

A hundred days without a verdict

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