I made art every day for a month. Here's what I learned.
My (joyful) experience with The Daily Play art journal.
You’re reading Soft Hobbies, a weekly newsletter for artists in all mediums, with a special focus on writers. Here you’ll find resources to nurture your creativity, advice to overcome perfectionism, and inspiration to make time for art. I’m Auzin, a Seattle-based fiction and poetry writer. Feel free to visit my author website or check out my socials.
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“Play” is a big word this year — have you noticed? It seems that adults everywhere are rediscovering the pleasure, benefits, and necessity of play. According to this article from Psychology Today (click through for academic sources), “play relieves stress, fuels creativity, imagination, and problem-solving abilities, and facilitates happiness and well-being. Play is also a gateway to empathy, communication, and relationships. It reinforces the ties that bind us together and helps to create a sense of community.”
That all sounds great, but if you’ve become distant from playtime as an adult, it can be hard to know how to pick it back up again. Obligations on your time and energy are overwhelming, and you might struggle to fit play and creativity into your packed schedule. In these trying times, may I offer a book recommendation?
The Daily Play by Brittany DeSantis is a beautifully illustrated, year-long guided art journal built around one simple idea: what if creativity didn’t require hours, but just 10–15 minutes a day?
Through bite-sized prompts split up into the four seasons, ranging from meditative calligraphy and watercolor exploration to creative journaling, the book offers an approachable, low-pressure way to build a daily creative ritual. It’s less about “becoming an artist” and more about rediscovering focus, play, and presence.
I’d been feeling stagnant in all my creative endeavors, so I decided to challenge myself by doing at least one short exercise from this book every day in the month of May. Usually, I accomplished it in the morning, right after breakfast. Keep reading to learn more about how the challenge went for me and see pictures of the artwork I created!
Note: This post is not sponsored, but I was sent a copy of the book by the publisher in PR. This writeup contains my honest thoughts and takeaways.
You can watch a 1-minute intro to The Daily Play below:
First, I set up my play station
My goal was to create as little friction as possible, so I had a solid chance of completing an exercise from the book each day. And I’m happy to report that I only missed two days! I made up for those days by doing two or more exercises the next day. Here’s what I did to make my experience smoother:
I chose the spot I would create in each day — the kitchen table.
I set up my 3-tier art cart with all the pens, brushes, paints, and other tools I’d be using on the top shelf, plus The Daily Play and some scrap watercolor paper on the middle shelf.
I kept my paint cup filled with water and just kept using it each day, replacing it whenever it got too dirty. I wasn’t too fussy about it.
I decided on the three specific paint palettes I’d use all month, instead of wasting time picking new ones each day.
Before May started, I went through the “Spring” section of the book and put sticky tabs on all the prompts that I felt most excited about completing.
Day 1-3: Getting familiar with the book
There are three main categories of prompt in The Daily Play: calligraphy, watercolors, and continuous line drawings. Other types of creativity are interspersed throughout, and I’d encourage you to try all of them. Play is an antidote to perfectionism, and it’s okay to be less-than-great at something. I’ll tell you right now that my calligraphy skills are quite weak — I’ll blame it on being left-handed.
Here are some bits from The Daily Play’s introductory section that really resonated with me as a recovering perfectionist:
“Inevitably, perfectionism will peek into your pages. Do them anyways. The more you create, the quieter perfectionism gets.”
“Remember inertia: objects in motion will stay in motion, and objects at rest will stay at rest. What can you do to stay in motion?”
“Think of the prompts as guides instead of rules.”
I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t have the optimal kind of brush pen for the calligraphy prompts, but I still wanted to try them because I have this beautiful glass fountain pen that I never use, and I love dipping it in ink to write.
There are some prompts to help get you familiar with watercolor brushes and basic color theory. This helped me understand how much water the pages of the book could handle, and how to properly mix my paints to make a light wash. I’m a very ~watery~ painter, so the practice was nice.
Day 3-12: Florals and linework
Since I started The Daily Play in its Spring section, florals and greenery were a frequent part of the prompts. I sketched and painted a lot of flowers, which you won’t hear me complain about — I always appreciate learning the names of the beautiful plants I see around me. These exercises are very beginner friendly, since you are often tracing over lines with a brush pen or adding linework to already-existing watercolor sketches. I frequently found them relaxing and meditative.
My drawing skills are very childlike, two-dimensional, and simple. We’ll call it ~my style~ lol. Here are some cuties:
Day 12-23: Starting to go off-book
My boyfriend can attest to the fact that I don’t like following instructions to the letter. That burns me on baking recipes, but I felt like my instincts were validated by these exercises. Nothing is over-explained or dictated, and you’re welcome to skip or combine prompts as you see fit. I loved being able to focus on the prompts that really got me excited to create, instead of being locked into a rigid system or numerical order. Rigidity is not a friend of playtime, after all!
Mid-month was around the time that I started creating even more once I finished my daily prompt. I felt inspired and soothed by watercolors in a way I hadn’t felt since my initial obsession with them in 2022. My fifteen minutes of creativity often turned into half an hour or more.
Day 23-31: Routine vs. life
May 31st is my birthday, and life really started to speed up near the end of the month as I prepared for my party, went to my first renaissance fair of the year, and was generally a busy bee. Sometimes, I had to shuffle my Daily Play time to the afternoon or evening — happily, natural light remains until 9pm in this season. I can see this routine becoming harder to stick to in the darkness of Seattle fall/winter.
I will be honest and say that I did often feel guilty or stressed over the prompts during this time. Which is really not the point, but perfectionism and an anxious disposition can’t be fixed by a single book. However, the exercises in The Daily Play never stopped being fun, encouraging, and unique. I appreciated the occasional focus on reflection and introspection paired with art.
One of the best things that happened this month was falling back in love with watercolor painting, which led to the creation of multiple original pieces after playing with the daily prompts. I’m really thankful to this book and to myself for prioritizing creativity and making space for it.
Here’s a bookmark:
And here’s a groovy snake:
My takeaways from a month of daily play
This was genuinely such a great way to start the day. Exercising my creative muscles for 15 minutes was an approachable daily achievement that had a noticeable positive impact on my state of mind. There’s a lot of choice and freedom with these prompts, but enough guidelines and examples to keep you from feeling overwhelmed with options. Everything is geared towards being low-stress and fun, so even if you’ve never sketched or painted before, you can have a good time.
Who would love this book:
Anyone who is working on their analog hobby game
Those who need to stop the scroll and quiet their minds
Hobbyist/amateur watercolor painters, sketchers, and art journalers
Anyone interested in art journaling for their mental health
Extremely busy people who still want a way to create instead of consume
Who is not the best audience:
Children — the book is best suited to teens or adults
Professional artists, unless you want a super low-stakes outlet
If you really don’t like using a specific medium that’s explored in the book
If you’re intrigued by The Daily Play, feel free to check it out and purchase it here. I recommend it! You can also use my Bookshop affiliate link to toss me a few coins with your purchase ;)
Make sure to follow the author, Brittany DeSantis, on Substack or on Instagram.
Thanks for reading! If you got this far, drop a comment with which of my Daily Play pieces was your favorite.
Softly yours,
Auzin
Definitely an interesting concept, turning art into play instead of focusing on results (it is SO hard to separate perfectionism from art so I like how you approached this). The frog is definitely my favourite of your drawings!!
This is beautiful! It kind of reminds me of those workbooks many of us used as kids, and the focus on "play" probably emphasizes that association a bit for me :) I feel like this is something that would be fun to do with friends as an inexpensive gathering, too!