Sidewalk Chalk Day

My attempt with sidewalk art

Today my son and I participated in a local sidewalk chalk painting competition as a promotion for our local  Blick Art Store. We were asked to sign up last week thinking it would be just a lot of community fun and a chance to do something interesting. Of course I had to say yes!

Halfway done

Each participant was given a mapped section on the sidewalk just outside the store and Blick provided a small set of soft pastels and a goody bag full of an assortment of artsy things along with a bottle of water. We were allowed to bring supplemental pastels if we chose to and so I brought some of my older hard pastels from home along with a pair of rubber gloves, a photo to work from and my yoga mat for knee protection. A good choice that was as my knees were worn down a bit and my fingertips burned through the gloves from blending the chalks. I came up with the idea of wetting down the pastels with the bottled water to get a wash into the cement. It was a bit of a risky move, but it worked out really well as it also made the image look "watery"

Here is Cody's finished piece "Shrimp boat"

Getting into the creative mode. 

Here's our sidewalk studio

As I was finishing up, I did exactly what I always tell my students to NEVER do... I BLEW on the art!  Ghaaad! The dust went  everywhere and created a 'grey haze" over the entire work. Man, I guess I should listen to myself every now and then, hmmm?

This morning we got word that Cody won 1st place in the Children's category. He gets some tempera paints and some watercolors to get him off to a great artistic start. Yeah Cody!