My 100 day project - a quarter of the way through

One of my goals for 2020 was to take part in a 100 day challenge. This is an official challenge, but I always intended to pick my own time of year to take part. I've been put off in the past because we are often away at regular intervals and I didn't want my challenge to be interrupted. So with one holiday cancelled and the next very likely to be, lockdown seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a go!

I decided that I wanted to do drawing and painting and complete a page in my sketchbook each day. More specifically I wanted to try watercolours. I have a box of good quality watercolours which were bought while I was doing my Art A-Level a long time ago, and they are still in excellent condition.

It took me quite a while though to find the direction that I wanted to take. I was very inspired by this lady's sketches of her daily life during lockdown, but after attempting to draw my own children I realised that I wasn't at all pleased with my results.

So I moved on to trying to do some realistic drawings of the things around me. I was quite pleased with my paintings of the colourful leaves that fall on our driveway, and the blossom from a beautiful tree which overhangs our garden.

Then I spotted these lovely illustrations by Penny Neville-Lee on Twitter. The brightly coloured, abstract flowers in the final drawing really struck a chord with me, and for a couple of days I had a go at my own versions.

I decided that painting more abstract flowers was something that I wanted to continue, and so I turned to Pinterest for some watercolour flower tutorials. I found this tutorial for painting wild flowers with wet watercolours, and I used the technique to make first my own copy of the painting and the next day my own version with different colours. I was really happy with these paintings, I like the scribbled style of the drawing even though it doesn't really fit in with my own, neater style. I also enjoyed trying the splattering over the top of a painting with wet paint, I really like the effect.

So for the last few days I've been trying out some different ways of painting my own style of flower, and that's something I'm going to be continuing for a bit. I find it easier to just paint from my own head, and I'm experimenting with different colours, different styles of flower, and different layouts. I'm trying not to get too hung up on perfection and just treat it all as a learning process.

It's really interesting to see how much my style has changed over just 25 days! I find the painting really relaxing and it's nice to set aside a bit of time for myself everyday to work on it. Mia has also been enjoying painting with me, it's so nice to sit down together and paint. I'll update on my progress when I'm halfway through!

In the meantime, here is some colourful painting inspiration from my new Pinterest board: