That’s a wrap! The 100 day project that took me 231 days to complete. I started it back in August after a weeklong workshop called Writing the Unthinkable with cartoonist Lynda Barry. I expected to come away having deepened my writing practice, which I did. I did not expect to develop a new obsession. In the workshop (which was A++ from the first minute to the last) one of the things she taught us was how to easily and quickly draw what she calls ‘head shots.’ I hadn’t really drawn since childhood. And if I ever did try, I could never get on paper anything that resembled the thing I was trying to represent, so I always gave up. But Lynda showed us how easy it was. I fell in love with making head shots. They thrilled me. I am not totally sure why, I didn’t stop to find out, I just followed the feeling. In the days following the workshop, I probably did over 300 of them on 4x6 index cards (her preferred canvas for us in the class). I was so excited by this discovery, and told her so — she picked up my notebook and told me to take a photo. She also gave me a pen from a string around her neck. That was pretty much the best moment ever. It would have been easy for me to make these stories dark, that’s what my imagination naturally leans toward, but I decided from the beginning I wanted these folks (and one potato) to be up to something good, I wanted to them to be big-hearted and open, or at the very least offer some levity. Those kinds of stories didn’t come as easily after the election. Many days passed between entries. I couldn’t hear my characters’ goodness or their hope. But even when the stories wouldn’t come, I kept drawing. I have hundreds and hundreds of head shots in drawers and piles on my desk and just as many in the recycling bin. The day I figured out how to draw a beard was awesome! It took me around thirty tries to capture the folds of a scarf. I still can’t draw animal faces. But I have had fun trying. The coolest thing about this project is that I did it simply because I loved doing it. I’m proud of it. As a word person, it has been really cool to make pictures too. #the100dayproject #100daysofcartoonheadshots #madeupbiographies #thankyoulyndabarry #pamtoons