100 Notes From the Field
It’s time for the annual 100 day project!
Sunday is the first day of June, and the start of the 100 Day Project Scotland. In case you don't know what a 100 Day Project is I'm going to tell you, if you already know, skip this paragraph.
What's a Hundred Day Project, then?
The hundred day project was conceived (I believe) by Michael Bierut for art students at Yale School of Art. The idea is to do one, small, creative act every day for 100 days. It has to be something you can keep repeating, ideally with a slightly different outcome, that you can track in some way over and over. By the end of the project you will have done your task 100 times. So you might have 100* anatomy posters, 100 stamps featuring your work, or something a little more vague.
*I did this project, and no, I didn’t get to 100. So, 100-ish.
Why is this in a newsletter about facts?
I have started a 100 Day Project every year since 2018. Last year, 2024, was the first time I managed all 100 days since that first project back in 2018. The most successful one (I think) was my 100 Anatomical Days project in 2020. I made about 80 or so anatomically themed rough drawings for posters. It was a lot of fun, but it took a good hour or two (at least) every day. It was during the pandemic, so that was possible, but as you might be able to tell by the fact that there are not 100 posters, the pandemic ended and life came back and there wasn't enough time to finish. This year I'm desperate for a creative project, but incredibly short on time and brain capacity and energy and I will still be bringing you your weekly (mostly) fact, so I've got a cunning plan.
100 Notes from the Field
For 2025’s hundred day project I'm going back to basics with observation. 100 days of “field notes”, if you like. When I was studying animation the tutors impressed on us the importance of observational drawing. It makes you better, gives you the chance to play a bit, and by observing real life you’ve got a great mental and physical bank to draw from… in more ways than one. Keen to get back to building on that, I’m going to use this year’s project to make it habit again. I have realised that I might not get time every day to whip out my sketchbook every day (but I’m hoping by doing this… I’ll make more of an effort to) so I’m extending the scope to include reference images and video I have captured too. I often find myself taking pictures to look up/draw from later, and forgetting I did it, so this way I’m forcing myself to document, and keep track of what I document.
Long Story Short: What You Get
I will post a reference image, be it sketch or drawing or photo or video every day over on Instagram, creating a 100 days bank of Field Notes. I’m not sure what will come of it, but if nothing else I’m hoping to reinvest in my observational habit. You are very welcome to follow along on Instagram, but I’ll also do a weekly “summary” for this newsletter. My hope is that I manage to find some theme to tie the reference images together with, and we can learn some cool facts based on my weekly observations.
To get us started; here is the image from day 1, a still from the shaky video I took of what I think is a Little Tern. They’re apparently fairly common around the firth of forth in summer, and the UK’s smallest tern. This one was having a whale of a time.