Putting a New 100 Days in Motion

A colorful contour project takes shape, plus a review of a book of portraits of writers

Today’s letter is a preamble to something I hope will be a fluid set of humans moving in and through a rainbow-infused topography.

A. Cowen 2025

“Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine, and valleys of frustration and failure.” — Bill Watterson

Hello!

I feel a little wordless this week. Maybe too many words feels the same as too few, feels wordless on the surface. Maybe I feel like I’m just putting too many words on display, too many words in a glass jar where people can guess at the number, bypassing the intent, the story, the sinews. Maybe they are conversation hearts, crumbling in the airlessness. Maybe they are paper hearts. Maybe they are little affirmations, or admissions, rolled into scrolls. Maybe they are shapeshifters. Maybe they are irrepressible, lining up and linking arms, a chain of thought only made stronger by my momentary disavowal.

Never wordless.

Today’s post is a sneak peek at a series I am going to work on for the next few months. This both is and isn’t a repeat. I’m pretty excited about it.

Favorite line from this week: “Boys! Go stand by the giant rainbow menorah so I can take your picture.”

There is also a short review of Last Night’s Reading: Illustrated Encounters with Extraordinary Authors.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

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Random illustration as I thought about this week‘s intro. A. Cowen 2025

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Retracing My Steps

The 100 Day Project starts today. I tend to stick to myself, but I do think projects like this can provide structure and personal challenge.¹ If you are looking to build or strengthen your habit, a counted challenge can be a good approach.

It probably makes sense that I struggle with the desire to repeat projects. It probably makes sense because I have such trouble letting go of things. This is true both of projects that I have finished and succeeded with and projects that I started and didn’t complete, but that left a mark, projects that I always think I should revisit.

Takeaway: Even a project you don’t finish can be meaningful. Don’t let fear of not finishing make you not start.

I didn’t spend that much time thinking about this year. I didn’t follow my own process. I think I put off sifting through ideas because I was halfway considering picking up again with what I did last year.

I know that repeating a project often doesn’t go well, that repeats often lose resonance. I know this because I’ve tried.

The downside of loving what you do is the endless desire to inhabit that space, to repeat projects that captured your heart, to regain the sense of fullness.

Takeaway: Loving what you do is the best way to approach your creative habit.

It’s hard to explain how emotionally attached I was to last year‘s project. Creatively, it was a project I loved. Philosophically, it was a project I loved. It was challenging enough. It was reflective enough. It was deep enough. It was whimsical enough. It was poetic enough. It was filling. It hit all the bases for me.

Moving Forward

Part of me thinks that I simply should do some form of comic affirmations and should always do comic affirmations, make the process of paring down words to fit in comic panels a through-line. I made my illustrated journal my primary project because it simplified so many things about my creative life. It brought everything under one roof, a self-contained project that is endlessly flexible.²

The comic affirmations project, although they might have been melancholy affirmations at best, could easily be a project that I simply do in perpetuity.³

I thought about what else I might do within last year’s comic structure to change things up for a new year. I considered swapping something else in for affirmations.

But another project stood up from the shadows, another repeat. I started thinking about one of my favorite projects, a project of contours.

Slices of Life 3.0

Several years ago (2019), I drew contours of people in motion. I snapped photos in series and then did contour drawings capturing the slight movements as people shift in time and space. I referred to it as Slices of Life. It remains a favorite project.⁴ (I have a lot of favorite projects.)

This year, I wondered what might happen, or what might emerge, if I took the contours project digital. Part of what I so enjoyed with the comic affirmations (and my 52 weeks project) was working digitally. So I thought about trying contours in that format.

One thing I suggest people do when choosing a project is spend a bit of time in the days leading up to the start of the project trying out whatever idea they are considering.

Try it out before the start.

Try it out before you commit.

Try it out to make sure you enjoy it.

Try it out to see if you feel like there is enough substance, enough potential, or enough to explore.

Try it out to decide if this is something you think you might stick with for however many days the project involves.

There are all kinds of projects we might enjoy and may someday want to do that don’t have what it takes to be sustainable for a long series. Some ideas work best once or twice or here and there.

Takeaway: Before you commit to a long series, do a few tests.

Some of you have heard me talk before about this “testing” of a project. I call it acid testing. I think it is important.

So I did a few tests.

I pulled up a photo and did a contour, loosely experimenting to see what would be involved, what the edges of the project might be. I pulled up another photo and did another. And another.

I think I was almost instantly hooked.

These contours are not a series of a single person in the same way I did before, but the sense of motion, of capturing life unfolding, of something unfiltered, the way we move when no one is watching, is speaking to me.

There is a lightness and a starkness and something playful and loose and freeform in the interplay.

I don’t know exactly where this will go, but I have been really enjoying my exploration. The early tests opened up another element that I think will be a part of this series, something I am thinking of as background topography.

The words will be the next layer.

Instinct

I didn’t expect this project. It just all of a sudden came up as a way I might do something adjacent to other digital projects I have enjoyed but still do something new.

I don’t know how to explain where ideas come from or why things suddenly appear in front of us. I don’t know how to explain why sometimes we find just the right thing when we weren’t even looking.

I know that I tend to overthink things. I know that I look for symbols in places that could easily be explained in other ways. I know that I want to believe there is something else and something to find and something to understand, something that has meaning. I don’t know why this project popped up. It may be that it isn’t as cool as I think it already is. But right now, this has opened up as something that I think will be real.

Here are my pre-challenge proof-of-concept experiments, sans words. I need to see what, if anything, happens with the words.

Prototypes for a 100-day series of contour drawings. A. Cowen 2025

I hope you will follow along.

Looking for more information? Learn more about the official The 100 Day Project.

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Think It Through

I have suggestions for ways that people think about and select a long series because I think that giving yourself the best shot at choosing the right project for a long series is something you deserve. I know some people prefer to just out-of-the-blue pick something to do, and for some people that works. Sometimes it works to pick something that really will be just five minutes a day, and it can have enough substance and can have enough meaning.

Takeaway: We are all looking for something different with our creative projects, and I think the more we understand (and are honest about) our own needs and hopes and motivations, the better.

For me, for a project to be sustainable, it has to be something that hooks me in some multilayered way. That kind of connection and resonance is always what I am looking for and hoping to find when I decide to move ahead with a long series. But it isn’t always that easy. Wanting it isn’t the same as doing it or finding it. And sometimes even when a project has the right emotional or philosophical tug, other factors get in the way.⁵

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Book Review

Last Night’s Reading: Illustrated Encounters with Extraordinary Authors by Kate Gavino

This is a small-format book, but if you are interested in portraits, this is a nice collection of portraits and an inspiring collection of quotes.

In the illustrated introduction, Gavino explains her interest in chronicling the many kinds of truth that writers offer, from “happy truth” to “sad truth” to “truth-y truth.” She explains that she goes to readings so she can draw authors and so she can see them interact with readers (stepping outside the truth that writing is often a solitary act).

“I keep a map of all the readings I go to. It spans Harlem to Crown Heights and even New Jersey. Every time I add a new pin, I feel like I know the city a tiny bit better.”

The book is organized by themes of Love, Fun, Creativity, Storytelling, Strength, Identity, and Life/Death. Each page contains a portrait (in one color) and a quote from the writer, along with the writer’s name and the date of the reading (If applicable). It’s a who’s who of contemporary writing.

Portraits include Leslie Jamison, Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill, Lev Grossman, Salman Rushdie, Lois Lowry, Meg Wolitzer, Gary Shteyngart, Rainbow Rowell, George Saunders, Donna Tartt, Lydia Davis, R. L. Stine, Marjane Satrapi, Zadie Smith, Anne Rice, Emily St. John Mandel, Margaret Atwood, Laurie Halse Anderson, George R.R. Martin, James McBride, Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, Toni Morrison, Dani Shapiro, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Marilyn Robinson, Elizabeth Gilbert, David Sedaris, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, and more.

Seeing this book might inspire you to take a closer look at who is lined up to read at your local bookstores or library!

If the book is not available at your library, you can view Gavin’s work on her Tumblr page.

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Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 9 (2025)

Related posts:

• Episode 356: Slices of Life (2019 podcast)

• Slices of Life ICAD (2023 look back)

• Stone Lanterns and 100 Day Projects (pre-2024 start)

• Day 1 Starts Nice and Green (start of 2024)

A few examples from the 2019 series. This year is entirely different. A. Cowen

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Made It?

Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

I know some of you are starting a 100 day project today. I hope you get off to a wonderful start and that you are excited about whatever you have decided to do. I hope you think about ways to track it and ways to keep yourself inspired and motivated and ways to find and bolster your self-accountability.

I hope you do it for you.

I hope you find what you are looking for, and what you need, in the process.

I had the fleeting thought that I wish I was starting one hundred days off. What a concept!

Other small things I would like to do intentionally for 100 days (which doesn’t mean I don’t already do them):

• Write in my physical planner each day

• Read and track daily reading

• Morning journaling (continue)

• Glue things into a composition book (start)

• Walk (doubtful)

Sometimes seeing the little things that we would like to do more of or do with more regularity can be clarifying.

There are just too many things to explore.⁶

I hope you are open to the ways in which a project can change you.

What will you start or try this week?

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Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!

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Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.

Links to books are Amazon affiliate links. Always check your library.

1. Truth: This is an outcome of years and the most benign way, ultimately, to say what I do and don’t want to say.

2. Truth: I have no interest in anyone else’s rules or games.

3. Truth: I can’t say that 100 days of affirmations last year resulted in manifestation or change. But a part of me still believes there is power in the reframing.

4. Truth: I attempted to repeat this project for ICAD a few years ago. Repeats so often fail to stick.

5. Truth: I have started more projects than I have completed. (I think particularly of a stone lanterns series that I really wanted to work.)

6. I love Calvin and Hobbes. The opening quote comes from this comic.

I am empty.
I am questing, a ranging light.

A hundred days is a bit more than three months. 102 days will mark one year since last year. I am okay, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make these kinds of connections and see how things all fall in line on a map of time. Setting up a 100-day series that will run through these three months, through the final days of this first year, is something I know might be more nuanced than it seems, possibly in ways I will discover along the way.