A little bit of background about my 300 to 30 project that I just got to complete successfully last week. On my birthday last year, I had taken up this huge task of completing 300 paintings before I turned 30, which was last week by the way. I had a lovely time with family on my birthday which fortunately fell on a Friday, and over the weekend. We were out on a short break in Holland. And just as every trip to Holland triggers, I came back with several ideas for paintings. I simply love that country!
For those of you who were not aware of this project that I had taken up, you can read my announcement around the same time last year. Funnily, that annoucement is titled "about the blog" because I had started this project as a separate blog and then merged it with my regular one. I initially thought I'd post these 300 small paintings in a separate blog and other bigger ones in my regular blog, but it turned out I wasn't painting much outside of this project and so it made sense to merge everything into one.
While one year has flown by as time always does, I surprised myself by completing things on time. I have so many things to blog about – a handful of things that went really well, a bucketful of things that got screwed up royally, what I learned and so on. So without much ado, here we go.
When I started last year on my birthday #29, there was just one challenge in front of me, to do nearly 1 painting a day so that I get to 300 over 365 days. And I started well and completed 24 paintings in as many days. But then, things in my personal life went a little out of control (not because I was painting all the time, you silly!), and the husband had to change jobs etc. When he is around, he manages my daughter so well that I can paint as much as I want. But he started traveling too much and wasn’t around most of the time at home. This arrangement was draining me so much, putting up with my little one's withdrawal symptoms missing dad etc was too much of stress leaving me hardly any time and mood to paint. And so what started as a short break stretched blissfully over 4 months till the year end. I did not pick up a brush for 4 full months.
While I was telling myself that I had not committed to do one a day anyway, I was feeling guilty of not working on the project having committed in public. A few friends even mailed asking me why I wasn't putting up new paintings and what was up on the 300to30 front. And then with the New Year, I kind of started afresh with some renewed enthusiasm and have painted atleast 1 a day this whole year. And there have been days when I've done even 5-6 full paintings.
In between, I got caught up in other work in the real world, I had to complete a huge commission by the end of May which took up most of my April and May. At that time I thought that even if my project gets delayed a bit it's not that bad because I had a valid reason. But the saner side in me insisted that if I managed my time a little better it could all be accomplished. And so I'm rather glad that it all went fine, though I'd have been happier if I could've completed a little earlier. My obsession to have anything done at the last minute continues... :) Stay tuned for more, will write more about my learnings soon..
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