On July 14, 2015 I celebrated the last day of The 100 Day Project, which was arguably one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever participated in. For 100 days, I was tasked with doing a pencil illustration of a flower, finding out it’s symbolism and posting it for all to see on social media. The idea behind The 100 Day Project was pretty simple, you pick something that you are passionate with, pick an action to go with it and repeat the process for the next 100 days. It’s a celebration of the process and the making, the goal was not to produce a perfect piece of work day in day out, but to do something everyday, no matter what.
The reason I chose flower as my topic was purely because of my love of flower and my lack of floral vocabulary. There are over 400,000 species of flowers in the world, and yet I couldn’t even tell you the difference between a rose or a peony half the time. I wanted to learn about the different flowers out there as well as their symbolism and cultural significance.
I have to tell you, it was a hard 100 days. Picking which flower to draw gets harder and harder as I reach towards the 100 day, each drawing on average takes at least 2.5 hours, the longest was 7 hours, and it was not easy to find information on certain flowers. In all honesty, I’m not 100% happy with all of my drawings, but that’s not what this project was about. I’ve learnt so much about myself and drawing as a craft in that 100 days, I was so proud that I didn’t miss one day and had the discipline to finish such a difficult project.
Now that the project is over, I would really like to share my flowers with everyone. There were talks of an exhibition, a limited edition book and other bits and pieces, but I have decided in the end to release an original drawing and 20 limited edition print of a flower a week for the next 100 weeks. I’d like to stick with the 100 theme and the idea of releasing them gradually seems to suit my temperament.
I hope you like my flowers and will come back each week to see what I’ve release into the wild. Visit here to see all of the 100 flowers.
Week One: Dahlia
There are more than 30 species and over 20,000 cultivars of dahlias. The original French diva, Marie Antoinette, feel head over heels for dahlias when they were a new arrival in Europe, and now there’s a variety named after her.
Click here to buy the original art.
Click here to buy the limited edition prints.