Creating Mermaid Riding a Seahorse

I super love chalk! If any of you out there are interested in a medium that is more forgiving than colored pencil but faster than oil paint, one word; Chalk. Not to mention you can achieve vibrant colors while still being able to blend effortlessly. You should all be very excited right now. And guess what guys, I haven't even had my coffee yet.

As you can tell, chalk is one of my favorite mediums. I really love participating in the Glendora Chalk Festival in Glendora, California (which is where I grew up.) It's very reasonably priced to participate, plus they lend you a set of good-quality pastel chalks. I've participated a handful of times since high school and won a few awards. Last April, the theme for the festival was adventure, so naturally, a mermaid riding a seahorse came to mind.

The process begins by gathering reference for my idea. I love using Pinterest for this part, (I used to use Google images and that works pretty good too.) You can get inspired on Pinterest about anything, from cooking to decorating, I definitely recommend it if you're stuck in an inspirational rut. When looking for inspiration and reference, I keep in mind that the artwork is going to be on a piece of sidewalk, so it'll either be really long portrait-wise or a really wide landscape. Since I prefer drawing figures, portrait works best for me.

In the case of sidewalk art, I color print my references so I can hold them as I'm drawing. For the Mermaid Riding Seahorse piece I printed out about 20 different pictures, ranging from multiple kinds of seahorses to illustrations of mermaids to photos of young girls riding horses. I also feel it's important to have a color palette in mind and will gather a few variations of colors I have in mind. It was at this point I took my ideas and created a small, very loose thumbnail sketch of the placement and size of the artwork.

Beginning the chalk art is always very intimidating. I've never done any larger artwork so staring down at a blank slab of sidewalk while everyone watches me, looking to see where and how I'll start, is scary as hell. But you just gotta jump in and fast, you only have from 9 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. to get it done and some of your fellow chalk artists managed to get there early and are already a good ways in. So, I begin with a rough sketch over the sidewalk, trying to mimic my initial thumbnail drawing. It's ok to mess up at this point and change things around but at some point you just have to stick with it.

Next, I finalize sketch lines I like and begin coloring in shapes with a flat color, almost like a coloring book. Now it's time for the fun part; Shading. I get really carried away with this part and often have to hold myself back from making it look too rendered or realistic. I find chalk to be the easiest and quickest to shade with, especially if you're trying to achieve that smooth gradation you'd need for a face. I'll tell you what though, shading on concrete hurts like a bitch. My hands are pretty raw after six and a half hours of that. But worth it!

When 3:30 rolls around, my body aches pretty bad (gets worse every year!) and the judges are starting to walk around. I smiled at them and said hi but let's just say they were very stern! My friends and I check out the other artworks on the block then head over to hear the winners. In the end, of course I hope I win something but really what matters most is that I've created a super cool piece of artwork that I can add to my portfolio. That feeling of accomplishment after crawling around for six and a half hours is what I do it for. In the end, I was very honored to receive an award for Best 3D. I'm very excited to participate again next April, if I have time since I'll be in my last year of school. Thank you all for reading! Feel free to ask me any questions.