Looking back on a 3 month drawing challenge
#100DayArtistChallenge #100DayArtist
I’ve been thinking about failure states. It feels like I pulled the idea from programming or board games or something: a game must have a win condition, and possibly a lose condition, which have to be carefully defined so that the players (or the computer) knows when the game is over, who has won, and who has lost. Never-ending childhood games of Monopoly provide a convincing example of why specifying this stuff is a pretty good idea.
While I don’t think I quite fit the label of a Type A personality, I am very self-critical and have been known to set the bar very, very high for myself. All this talk of Art and Fear stems very much from that: demanding more of yourself than you can give, and then nervously backing away from something that is unreasonable and impossible.
We often think of success and failure in rather black and white terms. Indeed, failing to attempt something at all is certainly a clear-cut failure, and putting yourself out there despite fears and potential consequences is a clear triumph (not least over oneself). But aside from meek capitulation before one begins, I don’t think utter failure is as common (or as damning) as we think it is. Looking at one’s failures in a more nuanced way, examining all the shades of grey, seems inherently useful. Artistic advice abounds with insistences that failure can be a highly positive force, that you learn much more from your mistakes than from your successes. That without failure, you simply cannot grow at all.
Last year I set out to take on Mitch Bowler’s 100 Day Artist Challenge, as documented in a previous blog post1. My goal was to work for 2 hours a day on a cool new secret project2 for 100 consecutive days, from October 2020 until just after New Year’s.
Given those conditions, the challenge was very much a “failure”, strictly speaking. I did not work on the project for two hours every morning before starting other work. I did not progress on the specific mini-projects and sub-goals that would have led to an October launch – as usual, I focused on preparatory and peripheral work or unrelated drawing practice instead. I still found the project large and overwhelming and intimidating, and, deep down, I still felt that it was beyond my abilities. Honestly, I continued to be be repelled by it, to feel that same subtle and insidious dread and resistance that brought me to the challenge in the first place.
Moreover, I had decided to attempt this challenge at the same time as I was taking an online class on building an illustration client base, and also trying to create a solo entry for Manga Jiman 2020. And to top it all off, I was trying these three massive projects while staring down a consistently low bank balance, so there was an additional unarticulated pressure on all of these things and on my art in general to somehow magically turn into cash. These projects couldn’t just tick along at their own pace and do their own thing, with time to experiment and space to blossom. They couldn’t just BE. They had to be GREAT. And that is a surefire way to snuff out the creative spark and lightness of touch needed to make anything at all. I had spread myself very thin, and heaped a whole load of extra pressure on top. I inevitably dropped the ball on all of these things. I had set myself up for failure in the winter of 2020.
Yet now that spring is here, why don’t I feel like I’ve failed?
Well, compared to 2020, when I was very much cruising for any new distraction and mental escape, frequently losing track of my stated goals and flying off into new obsessive fancies, 2021 seems like a far greater success. I’ve been drawing a lot, almost every day, often several pages a day. I’ve been copying and studying the work of artists I admire, shamelessly, and then trying to apply those things in my own drawings. I’ve diminished some of that fear and resistance that I keep talking about, even around drawing comic pages, which I had somehow placed at the pinnacle of my drawing terror hierarchy, injecting them with unnecessary mental difficulty, making them feel like something I was never ready for. My drawings are better than they were before the challenge.
I also refocused my study efforts on my translation work, and I had some breakthroughs there that have stabilized my income and will let me better support my comic endeavours, without the pressure to turn a younger skill (drawing) into some kind of big earner.
Less pressure and less stress have increased results, surprising no-one.
So, success or failure? Given that the aforementioned mystery project finally launched in March, it doesn’t really matter. MURZENQUEST the webcomic is live, and it looks much better than I thought I could pull off.
The 100 Day challenge was a personal marker, a setting of intentions. It was not about producing a stack of work for daily public consumption — an Inktober or Septwitter or Splatvember — but something more internal, aimed at shifting something that was deeply stuck. I think I ultimately knew that from the start, and needed to make it a non-public challenge, not to avoid accountability, but because it was a different kind of process, one that would never be a very good show for the folks at home.
The challenge itself may have failed on every stipulated condition, but the ultimate outcome, looking back a few months later, ended up being some kind of emotional and artistic success.
That is not to say that that particular dragon has been slain. In The War of Art3, Steven Pressfield insists that the dragon never goes away – you must still battle it daily. I still have a lot to learn about approaching the work in a relaxed way, enjoying the process, and remaining more detached emotionally. But I do feel that something has changed. I have the finished comic pages to prove it.
Define your success and failure states thoughtfully and usefully, leaving plenty of room for external gains and peripheral benefits. Recruit your failures, lower the bar to define them more like successes, and they will only help to move you forward.
“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”4
If you struggle with making art, with applying arse to chair, with setting impossible goals for yourself, leave a comment below and share your perspective. This struggle is one of my favourite things to talk about out (although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing).
And if you haven’t already, go and check out the cool new secret project at www.murzenquest.com.
- 100 Day Artist Challenge blog post, October 2020.
- www.murzenquest.com
- I should set up some affiliate links, I talk about this book all the time ? Edit: Affiliate links now available! If you like, you can throw a few pennies of support my way by buying your own copy of The War of Art or Art and Fear.
- I love this Samuel Beckett quote, although I read recently that its common usage in Silicon Valley entrepreneurial circles is based on a complete misunderstanding of the original source text. However, I still find it extremely true to the artistic process and to the long slog of getting better at something, so I’m going to keep using it.
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