The 100 project

In this piece of self-assigned homework, we'll draw 100 of anything we want to get better at. There's no time limit, although you'll see your best results if you manage to complete the challenge in 30 to 100 days.

Step 1: Identify what you'd like to be better at, and be specific.

"I want to be a better artist" is far too vague. Pick a specific goal such as "I want to draw better faces."

Step 2: Try to break this goal down into smaller goals. List them. Notice if one might interfere with the other goals if it isn't tamed first. Choose the most foundational goal.

My goal to improve my faces has a number of smaller problems I'd like to address:

The accurate placement of features in a face regardless of angle
More lifelike, engaging, beautiful eyes that people fall in love with
Easily changing the expression of a face while remaining recognizable as the same person.

Clearly, #1 will be important for accomplishing both 2 and 3, so I will start with 1.

Step 3: Commit to practicing that aspect of drawing 100 times. Each practice should take a minimum of 5 minutes.
If you set aside 15 minutes of practice time every day, you can get through 3 five minute drawings. At that rate, it will take only 33 and a half days to complete this project.

Keep your brain engaged in thinking about what you want to improve the entire time. Use reference images and really study (while drawing! Keep that pencil moving!) the body part or anatomy you're focusing on.

You will see dramatic improvement in your area of choice.

Step 4: Start again with a new goal!

Post your daily images here, and encourage your fellow students to keep going to meet their goal!

Hi

I have been coming here for little over a year and have actually already written a piece of fan mail.

I love the fact that this place is now a forum and I plan to be very active.

To prove this, I will participate in the 100 challenge, so here is my affirmation:

step 1: I would love to be better at drawing environments

step 2:

#1 I will work on basic perspective

#2 I will work on light sources and shadows (including, but not limited to colour practice)

#3 I will work on creating an interesting composition

#4 I will work on infusing my drawings with a particular mood

step 3: I will commit to drawing one drawing per day for 100 days

step 4: I'm not quite sure how to upload a drawing yet, but once I figure it out, I will upload my daily drawing for today

sincerely

Sylvester Hansen

Hi Sylvester! I'm thrilled to have you joining in. You've identified some very ambitious goals, and definitely some things that I have terrible trouble with myself.

I've been working on faces. I'll try to join you in posting my faces. :)

Probably the best way to get images here is to upload them into an image hosting service like http://imgur.com/ or http://www.flickr.com/ or http://picasa.google.com/ and then embed them here.

I confess to having let my practice slip, slip, slip. I'm finding it very hard to shake off the rust.

My imperfect scanner keeps cutting off the left side and bottom of the pages, but I share what I can!

Combination of 1 minute and 5 minute drawings.

Ok, so this is my first drawing in my pledge of 100.

I decided that the best way to get a variety of environments to draw was to go through my DVD collection and pause each movie at a random point along the time-line, than draw what is on the screen.

Today I challenged myself by watching the sci-fi masterpiece "Moon". This is what I got out of that: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87335956@N04/7997276154/

I'm getting the sense the site is trying to protect itself from attacks by clipping out HTML, thus robbing you of your images. Let me see what I can do about that. :)

BTW, I can see what you're trying to say in the back end of the site, and I'm really impressed at your environment sketches. I think the pausing movies thing is a brilliant idea.

I've worked out a way to let visitors post images.

[img] http://yourimageurlhere.com [/img]

Thanks for your patience with the early hiccups in the new site. :)

Hi Kim! Howdy Sylvester

First off the bat, I love this site, excited about the new features this site has to offer.

I really want to be a better artist. To learn how to draw humans/ animal/ environments. I have been practicing off Michael Hampton's book on Figure Drawing [Design and Invention] and always refer this awesome site to do all the exercises. I have been maintaining a blog http://elbowgreasedraw.tumblr.com/ so I can keep track of my progress.

Coming across your forum today and reading this post has motivated me to take the challenge of the 100 project and be more involved here rather than do it all by myself. Thus Count me in.

Here are my goals

step 1: I want to get better at anatomy, secondarily I want to work on my gesture drawing.

step 2: I want to be able to draw

faces
hands
feet

step 3: I will commit to drawing one drawing per day for 100 days and post it here. I hope to get faster and better as the days go by.

Let the games begin!

El Bow

 

 

Hi El Bow and welcome

I think your goals sound very reasonable and I really think you have gotten to the right place. I would recommend taking some of the classes that are on this page.

I would also recommend using the page http://lovecastle.org/draw/

it is what I used when I did this drawing:

&feature=share&list=UUt-WIGYIVp1OcLZ_HhFIanw

As for myself, this is my second daily upload. This time I took one of the first frames from the romantic comedy "what's your number": http://www.flickr.com/photos/87335956@N04/7999323004/

 

sincerely

Sylvester Hansen

Thanks for the links Sylvester. Shall definitely bookmark lovecastle.org

here's my 1/100 

Hi all!  I am going to give the 100 projest a go!  My main focus is to improve my ability to draw faces, namely
1)    The positioning of facial features
2)    Achieving a good likeness with the subject
3)    Improve my over all knowledge of anatomy

I have been playing with drawing for the last couple of years and have seen quite a lot of improvement though I lack the focus and determination, aswell as the criticism! So I think that joining a forum like this will help me greatly. I am going to create several drawings a day, hoping to complete the project within 30-40 days. I will try to upload my progress as often as possible.
Owen

Welcome to the challenge OwenG! Glad to have you with us. :)

I have been poor about meeting my daily goals. I have done some but not as much as I intended. I will try to catch up and remember to scan tomorrow when I have a little more time in the evening.

Looking forward to seeing more drawings from you all!

Hi again

So I am my third day of this project, and so far I'm doing OK.

I still find it hard to do nature landscapes, so for now I have gone back to the movie "Moon" to draw. However, this time I figured out that you get a completely straight horizontal or vertical line by holding down shift while drawing, that helped allot.

Here is the drawing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87335956@N04/8004299616/

BTW, for all of you who want to be better at drawing faces, I can recommend this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Sycra?feature=watch

Sweeet!, the crew is getting bigger. Welcome OwenG

Here are my second, third, fourth and fifth pieces. I started off with the 30second roughs, and moved on to the 10min poses so I could have time to drop in some shading and lighting.

Thanks for the links Sylvester

Hey! thanks for the warm welcome!
My first 3 images can be found here
I tend to fill up pages alot!