What I Learned From a 100 Day Portrait Drawing Challenge

What 100 portraits in 100 days taught me about style, consistency and letting your work evolve

During Covid I joined TikTok and found a community of people from all over the world sharing their lives, view and experiences on the social platform. I kept noticing something unique and beautiful in each of them, and I wanted to draw them. So many people caught my eye that it turned into a challenge: 100 days, 100 portraits.

I drew the whole series in a tall, vertical format, because that's how I was seeing everyone on TikTok. I used my trusty iPad and Procreate, usually with a TV show on in the background. I didn't expect the project to teach me as much as it did.

Continuous Repetition Improves Your Skill

The biggest lesson is also the simplest. When you draw every day, you stop starting from scratch. Each portrait picks up where the last one left off, and the small improvements add up.

Over the 100 days my drawings got better without me really trying. For instance I got better at capturing movement, through the pose or just through the direction and thickness of a line. You can see it below: the drawing from day 80 is so much stronger than the one from day 32.

People following my daily drawing posts noticed too. One person commented that they loved seeing how my art had changed since day 1, and that meant a lot to me.

Consistent body of work

I always thought my work wasn't consistent. This project proved me wrong. When I put all 100 drawings side by side, I was amazed at how well they worked together. Here's a random selection:

Usually I make one piece here and another there, and they all end up different from each other. During this challenge I drew every day, so I never had time to forget what I was doing and start over with something new.

It also helped that I stuck to a few limits. I used the same digital tools, the same format, and the same colors and brushes. And I always had about the same amount of time for each drawing, just a few hours after work each evening.

How to Start Your Own 100 Day Drawing Challenge

You don't need 100 days to see a difference. Pick a subject, set a small daily goal and stick with it. Keep the parts of each drawing you like, let the rest go, and trust the process. Your work will improve on its own.

You can see the full series at 100days100portraits.com. If you'd like to watch how I made them, I posted a drawing video for every portrait on my TikTok. Here are a few of them:

Happy creating!