100 Days of Painting — Caitlin Tibbs

This year I wanted to have a project that would challenge me to be more consistent as well as let go of perfectionism in my art practice. The 100 day project would be the first of many.

It started in February when I saw an email in my inbox about the 100 day project that was going to be starting up at the end of the month. (If you haven’t heard of the 100 day project, it is a challenge for creatives to come up with a personal project that they can work on for 100 days and share on social media.) I had tried this before, but failed after only a few days, because I did not have much preparation and my project was unrealistic. This time however, I decided to do a deep dive down the youtube rabbit hole of videos of tips for project ideas as well as other peoples experiences participating in the project. I was really inspired and confident that I could do it as long as I took a more realistic approach. So I got out my sketchbook and brainstormed some ideas. Ultimately I decided I would complete a gouache painting in 10 minutes each day. (Spoiler: 10 minutes was an unrealistic time for me. It wasn’t long enough for me, even working at my fastest and I didn’t have enough time to really enjoy the process. So I eventually changed it to 20 minutes.) In the following days I decided to fulling commit by purchasing 100 sheets of paper, extra paint and a new brush or two. I was ready to jump in.

With it being winter time, I was not very inspired by the world around me. Everything was grey and dead. So, I decided I wanted to go back to the vacations we took the previous year when I felt inspiration all around me. Luckily I had plenty of reference photos to work from. There were two main trips that I worked from as well as the occasional random moment from everyday life just to break things up.

The first location was Florida. We went to Vero Beach (one of my favorite places) to visit my family. While we were there we did typical thing things like playing at the beach, pool or local playgrounds. We also did a few more exciting things like a fan boat tour, visiting our favorite orange grove farm and going to the botanical gardens.

Making our way through the botanical gardens

The botanical gardens is one of my new favorite traditions. They usually have an exhibition going on in the gardens. One year they had all these life size dinosaurs along the tour. It was very cool and felt like a whole different world. This year, they had an artist who was displaying Lego sculptures. Naturally our kids were very excited to go and these sculptures did not disappoint. They were amazing! I was also so cool to see these bright, man made creatures placed into the natural world. I didn’t paint many of the sculptures in this series. I was more focused on the beautiful plants and the shadows along the tour, but I’m sure I will make more paintings in the future that might included the sculptures. Overall this was just a really fun afternoon activity with a interesting things to see.

A few years prior we went to St. Augustine on a family vacation and while we were there we went to a gator farm. This place was super fun to go to. We were able to see all sorts of alligators as well as a variety of local birds. I made quite a few paintings from the gator farm.

Our biggest trip and my most favorite so far, was our trip out west. When we go out to Utah, we usually drive straight through, but this year we decided to make it more enjoyable for everyone we would stop in Colorado. Other than driving through, we had never really been to Colorado. We figured we would hang around for two days to stretch our legs. We did some research and found some highly recommended trails and really just hoped for the best.

We stayed in Boulder to check out the Indian Peaks Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park. Our first hike was off to a rough start. We were all pretty tired of being in the car for so long and once we got to the Indian Peaks Wilderness area we were notified that we had to make a reservation before hand (I did not see anything about this on the website) to park in the regular parking lots, but we could park in the additional parking lots and hike up to Brainard Lake where most of the “fun” trailheads started. We did the hike and it was pretty technical and densely wooded, so it was okay, but not anything special. Once we made it to the lake we played in the water for a bit before heading back down to the car. We could tell a storm was headed our way so we opted to take the road back. Sure enough, we ended up walking back to the car in a hail storm. As you can imagine with 3 small children, there was screaming, crying and concerns about whether we would be struck by lightning. After that experience, we weren’t sure if we should continue going on hikes.

Luckily the next day after getting plenty of rest we went back to take on the trail to Lake Isabelle (roughly 6 miles round trip). This trail was really fun. We started on a very wooded, single track trail that eventually opened up to a few little meadows and creek crossings before the big climb. As it got a little later in the morning, the trail started to get busier. Most of the people we talked to were locals and made it a regular habit to hike this trail. They were really impressed our kids were hiking it and said it was definitely worth it to get to the lake. (Our kids were the only kids on the trail. It’s not super kid friendly, but if you have kids that like walking for hours in nature and enjoy special hiking snacks, then it is a lot of fun and I recommend it.) The final ascent was pretty steep and rocky, but the second you see the lake it is truly breathtaking. Once we got to the top the kids' energy magically returned and we were just amazed at how pretty it was up there. We had a picnic lunch, watched some fly fisherman, saw some dogs play in the icy water and had a snow ball fight. (Lake Isabelle is at the base of a glacier). It was absolutely amazing.

We had wanted to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, but they require a reservation months in advance so we figured we wouldn’t be able to go, but on our hike up to Lake Isabelle, a nice older couple informed us that after a certain time in the afternoon they did not require reservations. So we hopped in the car and made it over to the park. We saw tons of elk, wildflowers and pikas. We drove to the last trail at the very top and did a short hike that looked out over the mountains.

Because we were enjoying Colorado hiking so much we decided to stay another day so we could hike another trail in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, Rainbow Lakes. This trail was a little hard to find, but well worth it. We saw maybe 2 or 3 other groups hiking while we were there and it has a campground near the trail head. The trail itself was pretty wooded and rocky, but in a good way. Along the trail there are 3 lakes you can stop at which is nice if you don’t want to go that far. We stopped at all three and they were absolutely gorgeous and fun to check out. We would definitely go here again and would probably camp there too.

After our fun stop in Colorado we headed to Moab to visit Arches National Park. We spent 2 days visiting the park because there is so much to see. The first day we got there bright and early to beat the heat and the crowds. We started at the infamous Delicate Arch followed by the Sand Dune Arch and Broken Arch. Later that evening, we walked the Park Avenue Trail. The Park Avenue Trail was really cool. The trail is in a valley surrounded by rock formations on either side. It was truly an experience. We went in the early evening so there were hardly any people on it, it was nice and cool and the sun was starting to set and was very scenic. I would highly recommend this hike.

Ike on a big rock on the Park Avenue trail

The following day we decided to take the road less traveled and see the Tower Arch in the Klondike Bluff area. This area of the park is only accessible by 4 wheel drive vehicles and ATVs and is rated as pretty difficult, as you can imagine it is not one of the trails that is frequently visited. We saw two other groups while we were on this trail. The trail was fairly difficult with steep inclines and sand dunes, but it was a super fun hike. The arch at the end was unbelievable too. I think it was my favorite trail at the park. After such a long hike we stopped at some of the really short trails and climbed on rocks.

Reese and I at one of the samller arches

After several days of long hikes, we headed to Manti, Utah to see family, relax and go fishing. We spent most of our time in Sanpete up in the mountains checking out all of Ryan’s favorite childhood fishing spots. Unfortunately some of the ponds had dried up or were drained and some we didn’t have any luck at, but we were able to catch a bunch at 6 mile ponds (my favorite fishing spot up there). We also just drove around and explored Skyline, which is the top ridge of the mountains.

We had a lot of fun on these vacations and I was really inspired by all the places we were able to go. I hope we can go back soon and explore some other new places as well as revisit some of our favorites. I hope you enjoy the collection of paintings that came from our adventures. And I’m sure I will make more.