Today is the start of #The100DayProject on Instagram. It's where you try to do something every single day for 100 consecutive days and post a photo of your daily progress. I know it will be tough. I just finished up #36DaysofType and even that was hard! At first it was fun, but there came a point where it was difficult finding the time to do it and I couldn't wait for the challenge to be over. But once I got through that initial rough patch, it came more easily.

Consistency is key. Once you do something over and over and over again, it becomes a habit. And once it becomes a habit, you learn to schedule your life around it. That is one of the main goals of #The100DayProject: to reclaim your time. If you can't find 10 minutes per day to do something just for you, there's a problem.

As an artist, it's extremely important to make creativity a habit. Every type of skill (even those not art-related) gets rusty over time if you don't keep it up. Use it or lose it! It's also necessary to recognize that most industry experts didn't get to that level overnight. They practiced their skills again and again to get to where they are now.

I'll be using #The100DayProject to learn calligraphy. Hopefully I can put it to use for my wedding next year! Although calligraphy is not the same as lettering, it is a distant cousin. Learning this skill will enhance my lettering since I'll have a better understanding of how calligraphic characters are formed.

I will work with a variety of tools over the course of the challenge so I don't get burnt out and bored. I'm still on a watercolor kick from this year's #36DaysofType (check out my posts over on Instagram), so I'm starting with watercolor calligraphy. First I'll use a paintbrush, then I'll move on to my watercolor brush pens. I also have an old Speedball calligraphy pen with a few different nibs, which is typically what comes to mind when most people think of calligraphy. I'll even try going digital by writing calligraphy on my iPad with a stylus. I plan to shake things up with Crayligraphy, Colin Tierney's method of using Crayola markers. And I may even go super out of the box and do something crazy like Ian Barnard's vegetable calligraphy.

My goal for this endeavor is to make time for creativity every day. Even if I don't like what I make, being held publicly accountable will keep my perfectionism in check. I definitely want to design the paper goods and signage for my wedding, so I'm hoping to learn calligraphy well enough to utilize it. Maybe my wedding invitations will be addressed with a chili pepper? We'll see!