Stafford Illustrator, Paul Williams recently undertook a creative endurance challenge (Another) 100 Days of Art whereby he uploaded a new full colour artwork to his Tumblr blog every day for 100 days to raise money for Save the Children through donations from friends, family, fans and followers.
Now that the project has now come to an end, I caught up with Paul to talk about the project.
Describe the challenge in 3 words
Challenging. Useful. Enlightening
What inspired the project?
Basically the fact that I had graduated from Uni and suddenly found myself without anything to do. I was always very hard-working on my course and often wound up doing much more work than I needed to and I think part of that was having a Brief to meet, some kind of challenge. If I sit down and just try to draw something from scratch without any real 'reason' to then I barely ever manage to do anything. This is also why I've never really been able to keep Sketchbooks, which is the reason I did the first '100 Days of Art' series, to make sure I was drawing daily.
So I basically was looking for a reason to draw again and remembered the project and thought "..... I'll probably regret this, but why not". Also getting the chance to raise money for charity with it was appealing, which I have to say was a decision put in my head by following the Daily Doodle project for most of the year.
What were the high points and low points of the project?
I started the project with a style I was very into at the time that was influenced by UPA/Tiki-bar style artist Derek Yaniger, though very quickly realised it wasn't really working for me and ended up having to abandon it after 5 or 6 days. There just weren't many places I was able to take it really, which was a shame. I'd also chosen this time around to do away with the weekly themes from the first series of 100 Days and just draw what I felt like drawing on the day - this was a blessing in one sense and a nightmare in another because, although I had more freedom, I always have to have a sense of structure within my work and there's the occasion where it felt like the project was just drifting aimlessly rather than heading in any particular direction; luckily these only lasted a few days and I usually managed to get a hold of something that really worked and then make up for the few below-par days.
The height of the project probably came with the Homer Simpson Vs Army of Darkness picture which got an unbelievable amount of reposting on line in various places. My cousin even was aware of the image the first time I showed it him and he had no idea I'd drawn it.
Any words of advice to give to other creative’s out there that may be thinking of starting their own daily art project?
I think everyone works differently but for me, it was important that I was able to experiment with things until I felt I'd really gotten everything I could out of them - the best way to learn is to try and do something new whenever you feel 'comfortable' in a style, that way you avoid complacency and can also return to it at a later point with a different perspective or new ideas. Although it is a massive commitment, I would recommend everyone try something similar at least once just to see what comes out of it. I'm very proud of the fact that most of my Portfolio is currently made up of work that was created for this project.
To find out more about Paul Williams, or his 100 Days of Art project, visit his newly launched website macabremagpie.net
