Chalk Art on the Street

Our community will finally have it's first Street Painting Festival! I have jumped on board. (Over 10 years back, I did a festival in San Rafael, and really loved it.) I've always dreamed of a chance to do this again. This morning about 20 (out of 150 total) artists met to discuss tips and techniques for the event, then met in the parking lot to practice. Artist Melanie Stimmell is shepherding us along, and she's been really generous in sharing methods, photos, and generally helping pull the event together. Melanie does street painting all around the world. If you've never seen her wonderful work, there's lots online, including video of her at work on really large pieces.

To see other street painters, search under madonnari.

One of the tenets of doing street chalk art is to accept the surface, and work with it. Melanie showed us ways to minimize holes or dips in the pavement, and how to make cracks work in your favor. She showed how to layer chalk without drowning in powdery residue. She demonstrated blending thin layers to create an underpainting, and when to stop blending. It was soooo much fun!

One thing I learned today was to build my design with larger images.

Rough texture can make delicate rendering pretty difficult. The close-up test drawing shows the problem I was having. My actual square will be 6 x 6 feet, so there should be no problem in upping the scale. This face was about 8 inches chin-to-hairline. I'll need to make the main figures larger than that I guess. Haven't decided on the image yet.