In Austin Kleon's wonderful book, Steal Like An Artist, a key element of his manifesto is "Creativity is Subtraction".   The more we narrow our options, and our focus, the more creative we are forced to become.   Following in the footsteps of Michael Beirut's 100 Day Design Workshop,  the 100 Days of Ten  project focuses our attention on one task to repeat each day for 100 days.  Let's expand our creativity during the quiet winter months. The concept is simple:  pick a creative task that you can achieve in approximately 10 minutes.  If you want extra time, try to limit yourself to 30 minutes each day - you want this to be really doable, even if you have a cold or are on vacation.

Give yourself permission to create, exercise, and DO your task each day for 100 days

Record your efforts

Share them on Instagram or Facebook

Support others who are also giving themselves 10 minutes a day

Hashtag your project #100daysof10 so we can keep our project separate from other similar projects out there.

Create a hashtag for your own project such as #10minutesof___________ or #100daysof____________

Some ideas:

• Pick a color - 100 days of green, red, blue, black, pink, white

• Pick an object - your garden gnome, hair, doorknobs, leaves

• Pick an action - look up, down, through a window, through an aperture

• Pick a challenge - too dark, too light, inside, outside, left-handed, no hands

• Pick a subject - food, kids, animals, trees, jogging

• Pick a medium - drawing, painting, photography, cell phone, computer, writing

More specific:

• Writing in a journal

• Creating a creative edit in Photoshop

• Hand-tinting black and white photos

• Creating photo quotes

• Hand lettering

• Cartoons of cats

• Shooting with off camera flash

• Challenge yourself with simplicity

Check out some past projects on Instagram:

Wrongest choice - this IGer took a photo each day using the "wrong" settings on her camera, applied the "wrong" filters, took a photo of the "wrong" subject

Painting Trees - this artist wound up selling her work and had a number of her paintings from this project in a national exhibition

Sad Animal Facts - This artist drew hilarious comics about sad animal facts and wound up going viral

Bad Fonts - A look at awful and often illegible fonts

Sunsets - Photographing the sunset each and every day

Black and White Photography - If you choose this topic, make sure your own hashtag is unique so you can separate your own work from others.

Disconstruction - My own project, if you're curious, working with photos of demolitions I had taken over 10 years.