What 100 Days of Painting Actually Did to Me

Hey, hello there, friend!

For the past 100 days, I’ve been painting every single day, and I wish I could tell you I started this with some big strategic plan or a perfectly mapped-out idea of what would come out of it… but the truth is, I didn’t.

I started because I wanted to become the kind of person who creates daily. That was the real intention. Not just to make more art, but to feel proud of how I show up, to loosen up, to paint like a child again, and honestly, to see what else was still inside of me waiting to be expressed.

100 Days of Art Practice 2026 by Drica Lobo

But if I go a little deeper, there was something else driving this.

I’ve been very consistent at the gym for a while now, and I know what that kind of discipline does, not just to your body, but to your mind, your identity, the way you trust yourself… and at some point, I realized I wasn’t bringing that same devotion into my art.

So this became less about painting, and more about alignment.

Somewhere around day 70, something shifted… and this is the part that surprised me the most.

Most people think that doing the same thing every day eventually kills creativity, but for me, it was the opposite, I had to pay attention more, because I could easily go into autopilot.

That’s when my wave patterns started to come through more consistently, and even though from the outside they might look similar, I can tell you they never felt repetitive.

If anything, that’s when it started to feel liberating.

I stopped trying to control the outcome, stopped overthinking every decision, and just let the brush move the way it wanted to move, and for the first time in a long time, I allowed my art to just exist without needing to justify it.

That feeling alone was worth everything.

At the beginning, though, I’ll be honest… I felt a bit disconnected.

I kept questioning if I was going too far from my usual style, wondering if people would still recognize my work, and that tension was there for a while.

But instead of pulling back, I stayed with it.

And slowly, that question of “does this look like my work?” turned into something much more interesting, which was “what is actually trying to come through me right now?”

That’s when things started to deepen.

I found myself going back to the same elements over and over again… the ocean, the moon, the sky… and at first, I thought maybe I was just staying in my comfort zone, but the more I paid attention, the more I realized there was something else happening. I wasn’t repeating, I was investigating... the journalist in me never really left ;)

I started looking for meaning instead of just focusing on aesthetics, and what came up felt very aligned with how I’ve been seeing life lately.

Less black and white, less right or wrong, less separation between things… and more of a sense that everything is connected, moving together, influencing each other in ways we don’t always see right away.

That’s where the idea of Ripples  started to land more clearly for me, like every moment is part of a much bigger orchestration, and nothing really exists in isolation.

The moon became this anchor point in almost every piece. A circle, a center, something constant.

Most days, I would actually start there, sometimes using dried paint from my palette, little fragments from previous days, and build the painting around it instead of planning the composition first.

It felt intuitive, almost like the painting was revealing itself instead of being constructed. And naturally, my strokes started to change too.

There’s definitely less control now, but at the same time, there’s more confidence, more depth, more trust in letting colors mix, collide, and find their own balance without me trying to force it into something perfect.

It became less about getting it right… and more about being present with what was happening.

But the biggest shift wasn’t on the canvas. It was in me.

I used to face a lot of resistance when it came to creating, procrastination, overthinking, waiting for the right mood or the right idea, and somewhere through this process, that pattern just… lost its power.

I don’t question showing up anymore.

And that alone feels like coming back to a version of myself I hadn’t fully accessed in years, especially when I was first stepping into my career around 2016, 2017… but now with a completely different level of awareness and intention behind it.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ll probably notice that these pieces carry something different. Not because I tried to make them different… but because I got out of the way enough for something more honest to come through.

And if you collect my work, that’s really what you’re collecting… not just a finished piece, but a moment of transformation, a shift in how I see, feel, and create.

I documented all 100 days of this journey, the process, the questions, the breakthroughs, and I’ll leave the link HERE (I'm really proud of this episode :) if you want to go deeper into it.

It’s been a very personal experience, but also one I think we can all relate to in some way, that idea of becoming someone through consistent action, not just intention.

And now, all of this is leading somewhere.

On May 29, I’ll be showing this body of work at Easy Reader's space, in Hermosa Beach.

That space holds a very special place in my story, and I’ll share more about that soon, because it really did shape a big part of my art career.

But for now, I just want you to save the date.

Because this isn’t just another show… it’s a moment where everything I’ve been building over these past 100 days finally comes together in one space.

I hope you love it!

COlor Your Life!

Drica