100 Days of Noticing: One Tiny Watercolor at a Time
There are exactly 100 days left in 2026. I know this because I saw someone mention it, not because I am the kind of person who sits around calculating how many days are left until December 31.
My first thought was that I should do something with those 100 days. My second thought was that I am historically not great at these kinds of things. Give me a 30-day challenge, a 100-day project, a daily anything, and there is a decent chance I will start out wildly enthusiastic, make a whole plan for it, possibly buy supplies I absolutely did not need, and then quietly wander off somewhere around Day 11.
So naturally, I decided to do a 100-day project. But this one feels a little different.
I started watercoloring fairly recently, and one of the things I like most about it is that I am still very much learning. I don’t have years of habits or expectations wrapped around it. I can sit down, paint a leaf badly, figure out something I didn’t know before, and move on. I’ve also noticed that watercolor has been making me look more closely at things.
The shape of a leaf. The colors hiding inside something that initially just looks green. Mushrooms along the trail. The way the mountains change depending on the weather. A frog I nearly stepped on because, apparently, some of them believe camouflage is a competitive sport. All of those little things that are easy to walk right past.
So that’s what I’m doing for the last 100 days of 2026. I’m calling it 100 Days of Noticing, and starting today, I’m going to paint one small watercolor each day, inspired by something I notice.
And I mean small. This is not going to be 100 finished 5×7 paintings, and I am not trying to create 100 pieces of sellable artwork. There won’t be a coordinated collection planned in advance, and I am definitely not requiring myself to turn every painting into a product. I just want to notice something and paint it.
Maybe it takes ten minutes. Maybe some days I spend longer because I’m enjoying myself. Maybe one day it’s a mushroom and the next it’s my coffee mug. It could be something I saw while walking the dogs, something growing beside the trail, a feather, the sky, a paintbrush sitting on my desk, or some completely ordinary thing that caught my attention. That’s really the whole point.
I’ve spent a lot of this year making things with a destination already attached. Art for a collection, art for Trail Side Post, art for mugs, art for products, art for a challenge or a brief or something I need for the shop. I love doing those things, but I also want some room to make something simply because I notice it.
There are a few rules, mostly because I know myself. I’m painting one tiny watercolor a day. It does not have to be good, and it does not have to become anything. If I miss a day, I am also not going to turn the next day into some ridiculous watercolor debt where I suddenly have to paint six mushrooms and three leaves because life happened. I’ll just keep going.
I’m also not writing 100 blog posts about this because nobody needs that, including me. Instead, I’ll share a recap here once a week, featuring the little paintings from the previous seven days and some thoughts on what I noticed along the way.
I’m curious about what 100 of these little paintings will look like together by the end of December, but I’m even more curious about what happens between now and then. Whether deliberately looking for one small thing worth painting every day changes what I pay attention to, whether I get a little better at watercolor simply by showing up regularly, and what this tiny visual record of the last 100 days of the year ends up looking like.
Today is Day 1, and for once I don’t have an elaborate plan for where this needs to go.
I’m just going to notice something and paint it.
