#100DayProject // 100 Days of Skies + Colors [April]

Who’s doing the #100DayProject?

Once I started to get the emails about the #100DayProject this year, I considered participating, but didn’t really think that I would. I knew I wouldn’t do it unless it was something quick and something that I had a clear vision for. Nothing jumped to mind.

And then I went to New York.

Specifically, I want to the Museum of Modern Art. One of the exhibits had a few paintings from On Kawara’s “Today” series. Canvases with one color and a date splashed across.

I considered doing the same thing in a sketchbook, but that would require always having the sketchbook and paints with me and I know there will be times I’m away from home during the 100 days. I have a travel watercolor set, but still. There’s also the issue of color to use. I did some research on Kawara’s series and I didn’t see much about his use of color, other than he mixed paints on the day he painted. (What I did read is that he printed the date in the style and language of whatever country he was in when he did the painting and he typically made them all the same size, but there are some that vary in size if there was a big event in the world, like the moon landing.) Whenever I paint I tend to stick to blues and greens, so I knew I wasn’t going to vary much, especially during busy periods.

I spent about a week thinking through this idea. I even ordered a small sketchbook the day before the challenge was supposed to start. And then it hit me. I decided to combine my love of pictures of the sky with these date paintings. Each day I’ll take a picture of the sky, put it into Photoshop, and grab one of the dominant colors to create a second image with a wash of color. I also have a third file for each day: the color with the date written across, but I fell in love with the idea of being able to show off the skies and the colors during this 100 day period, so I decided not to include those in these wrap-up posts.

As I stated earlier, I knew this needed to be as easy possible, so I don’t have a list of rules to go along with it. But I’m trying to take the photos around the same time: as early in the day as possible. I’d say most of these were taken between 9:30 and 10:30 AM. Some of them were taken earlier, some of them were taken around noon. The latest I took one was around 3 PM. When I pull the “dominant” color, I tend to search the image and see what colors stand out. If there’s one patch of color that really grabs my eye when I look at the image I’ll go with that one. And once I see the color I know if it feels right. For instance, in one the clouds really were the dominant feature, but when I grabbed a color from the clouds I realized the most eye-catching color was the blue that appeared between them, so I went with the blue instead. The white/grey didn’t feel right. I debated whether or not I just wanted sky or if I wanted some trees mixed in. Eventually I decided there are days the photos need something to ground them… like tree branches. And it’ll be fun to see the trees change throughout the 100 days.

I ended up missing two days this month: April 12 and 21. Again, this is a fun and easy project so that’s fine. Also, I didn’t include the last photo from April. It would have been on its own and if I don’t miss more days I’ll end the project with 49 “swatches” of two. And without further ado, here are the Skies & Colors of April.