The Tiny Art Project

The Tiny Art Project

Day One - One Portrait a Day- Rediscovering Creativity

 Often and overwhelmingly at this time, the heaviest weight I have felt as an artist is the price tag I feel forced to attach to my imagination. When every blank page is viewed not as a place to create, but as a potential invoice, creativity becomes a chore rather than a calling. I am currently feeling trapped in this cycle; stuck art-wise, struggling to make sales, and viewing everything I create through the stressful lens of monetary value. It has become a suffocating pressure killing the exact joy needed to make meaningful work, leaving me feeling ready to walk away from it all.

By what feels like a pure accident, I stumbled upon Louise Fletcher’s YouTube video, The Tiny Art Project That Changed My Life. Instantly, it summed up exactly how I feel. Fletcher opens her video with a resonating confession: twelve years ago, after facing a painful exhibition rejection, she decided to give up on art entirely. She believed she had no talent, no future, and no reason to keep trying. The pressure to prove her worth had sucked her creativity from her. But a chance encounter with a drawing prompt gave her a small, low-stakes reason to keep going. She committed to a simple challenge: drawing or painting a self-portrait in a sketchbook every single day for a year. Crucially, she wasn't building a portfolio or trying to make a living from it; she simply wanted to keep making something.

Through this journey, Fletcher discovered four transformative lessons that completely rewrote her relationship with her work. First, she made failure meaningless. Because she had to make another drawing tomorrow, no single piece of paper mattered, which took the sting out of making bad art. Second, she learned that limitations create freedom. Sticking strictly to the same format and the same subject forced her to become wildly inventive with different materials and techniques. Third, she shifted from a mindset of judgment to curiosity, moving away from asking "Is this good?" to wondering "What if I tried this?" Finally, sharing created genuine connection. By posting her imperfect work online, she realized that people connected deeply with her authenticity, not forced perfection. Today, she is a full-time artist working in her dream studio—a transformation she traces entirely back to that tiny project.

My version of this lifeline is a daily face sketch in my sketchbook, with absolutely no time limits. To heal from the pressure of needing to make a living from my art, I hope this project gives me the headspace to get into a creative mode where money does not exist. I am not drawing to sell; I am drawing to discover. Because there are no time constraints, I can dive into sketching a face for hours or keep it fluid and loose, depending on my energy. I can look in a mirror, draw from imagination, or try blind contour lines where I never look down at the page. By removing the financial expectations and focusing entirely on the simple, repetitive act of sketching a face, I will attempt to lower the stakes completely. This tiny project is my permission slip to make terrible, wonky, beautiful, and experimental things without requiring them to be ‘good’. It is the fertile soil where my creativity can safely rebuild, free from the pressure of the marketplace.

 This starts today - 1st November 2026 - The aim is for the year and to hold myself accountable I will check in daily and publish each face sketch. Sketch One is graphite pencil and took approx. 25 mins.

Louise's YouTube Video The Tiny Art Project That Changed my Life can be viewed here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omU-EVpqD1I