Day 85: returning to yourself ⏎
thank you to Rukmini Poddar and welcome Lindsay Stripling
Hi, friends—
Thank you so much to
for guiding us through getting unstuck this week. You can follow Rukmini here on Substack at and on Instagram @rockinruksi. If you’d like to connect IRL, she has a healing arts retreat in beautiful Mendocino later this summer—details here. AND! She’s giving The 100 Day Project community a free download of her Draw Your Feelings workbook. Thank you, Rukmini.ICYMI: it’s (almost) party time 🥳
Local meetups all around the world to celebrate your 100 Day Projects—read more here.
Quick check-in:
What have you been learning about your process?
What do you want to commit to between now and Day 100?
How will you acknowledge or celebrate your project, no matter how many days you did? What does completing the project look like to you?
We’re really in the home stretch now! Take a minute today to search the hashtag or look at tagged photos of @dothe100dayproject to leave a like or some love on people’s projects, it means so much to get support from the community.
→ Would you like to be featured next? Submit your art for the Day 90 Reel.
Our guest contributor this week is
, a San Francisco–based artist, illustrator, and teacher. (And podcast guest!). I first connected with Lindsay when I took her wonderful Yellow Brick Road workshop a few years ago; there’s something so nice about being in 1) in someone else’s container, and 2) in a cohort. Just like anyone can start a 100 Day Project any time, but there’s more magic in doing it together. Lindsay is writing on the theme of returing to yourself.Here’s Lindsay:
Hey everyone,
I’m excited to lead a week for this great group! I thought I would walk you through the things I do when I feel lost, when I feel a little uncertain that I have ever made a thing I like or when I want to feel more connected to my creative work. It’s really easy in the overwhelmingly distracting world to constantly look outside of ourselves when we seek inspiration. Revisiting myself, my work, my ideas is my best source of inspiration, it costs nothing, requires very little effort and is always effective.
Today I want you to look through your flat files, old folders of paintings, sketchbooks and drawings. I want you look through them like you are a person walking through a museum. Take notes on themes, ideas, questions you are noticing. Perhaps there is a composition or style that you have used that you gravitate towards.
I like to think of this as being an art detective, ask yourself questions and actually take notes:
What themes am I noticing that crop up over and over?
Are there materials that I worked with that I forgot about? Techniques I have used that I might want to return to?
Be specific: be specific with your critique and with your positive feedback- find language beyond “I don’t like” or “I like”—why do you like it? What are you seeing?
Set aside or bookmark things you forgot to finish.
Once you compile your list of detective notes, do some free writing. What thoughts, questions, curiosities are you left with? Does this spark anything for you? Don’t edit yourself, just let yourself get it all out. You can set a timer, or just see where it goes.
You can stop after that- or it might prompt some new sketching or brainstorming. Either way, that’s the activity for today! Let yourself sit with what you saw, and I will see you tomorrow.
 | A guest post by
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