Saturday, November 12, 2011

Chalk



The last thing that I wish to post on the Sarasota Chalk Festival this year is thanks to the Organisers and volunteers, in particular Denise Kowal (see http://www.ChalkFestival.com for more information on the Festival). Without their drive and vision the event would never have been held.
I would like to thank Bernadette Ward of ColorFin for providing me the wonderful PanPastels to use throughout the festival (see PanPastel.com or http://facebook.com/panpastel for more details).
I would also like to thank Jack Borland of Art Spectrum for providing me with some of their fantastic Australian soft pastels (see http://www.artspectrum.com.au/soft_pastles.html of more information).
Lastly I would like to thank my fellow artist for the warm welcome that I received and the openness to that they have in sharing their skills in this art form.

Sarasota











The Sarasota Chalk Festival is over. I’m back in Australia and I have started to sort through some of my photos. I have attached some images here of the ‘Dragon King’ image that I created, in various stages of development. For more images from the festival visit my chalk flowers blog (http://chalkflowers.blogspot.com/ ).
For the information of anyone interested in chalk drawings, this image was created using PanPastels and Art Spectrum soft pastels. It is 10 foot by 11 foot and took 3 days to draw. The image contains NO black line work. All of the line work is the product of negative space (the road surface showing through).
The Lego Terracotta Warriors, Sarasota Chalk Festival 2011, Leon Keer, see the work of Ego Leonard
Ruben Poncia, Peter Westerlink and Remko Van Schaik from the Netherlands
http://www.st-artgallery.com/art/measure-and-weight.html
The people’s choice award went to Cuong Nguyen, which is understandable if you have ever seen this man’s incredible drawing skills, also receiving medals in recognition of the quality of their work. These were not ranked and as my name appears among some of the best street chalk artist in the world, I am humbled to be on the list;
Chalk Artist
Tony Cuboliquido
Tomoteru Saito
Lorelle Miller
Eduardo Relero
Leon Keer
Julie Kurk-Purcell
Joel Yau
Vera Bugatti
Juandrés Vera
Valentina Sforzini
Craig Thomas
Cuong Nguyen
Julio César Jiménez
Sharyn Chan Namnath
Carolyn Schultz
Gregor Wosik
Michael Kirby - Opera
Kumpa Tawornprom
Tony Flowers
Ketty Grossi
Cathy Gallatin
Ruben Martinez

Graffiti
MTO (Going Vertical)
ChorBoogie (Going Vertical)
Kanos, Astro and Katre (Going Vertical)
Kobra, Kobra (Going Vertical)
Students:
Korry LaCalamito
Tai Ngo
Romana Tomasovic
Trishia Armstrong (working with Kurt Wenner)
I have attached some images of the Festival and a couple of the works that I thought people would enjoy seeing in various stages.

Unfortunately there are too many exceptional images created that I have photos of to include in this blog.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Sarasota

I have made a start on my drawing at the festival. Im using a Pan Pastel applied with the litest of touch on a small sponge. I had originally intend to only use these pastel on small sections. But the coverage and brightness of the colour is so go that I'm using the Pan Pastels for the whole 10 x 12 foot drawing.




Thursday, November 3, 2011

Sarasota

I've been in Sarasota Florida for the last few days now. The artist working on larger works, graffiti and murals have already started. The rest of us start tomorrow morning. I will provide some updates through out the festival, but leave most photographers up dates until I return to Australia.
The attached photo is of one of my practice drawings for my larger work tomorrow.


Friday, October 21, 2011

America


I am heading off on Wednesday (26th) to America for this year’s Sarasota Chalk Festival in Florida. The Sarasota Chalk Festival became the first international street painting festival in the United States last year and is now considered one of the most important international contemporary festivals in the world (http://www.chalkfestival.com/).
There will be 250 artist expected to participate in this year’s festival, 50 will be international visitors to America from Mexico, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Argentina, Korea and Canada. I will be the only Australian artist attending this year.
I am very excited about the festival and glad that I have made it so far with my chalk work. Especially considering that I first became interested in working in chalk almost by accident (about 18months ago an opportunity arose to create artworks on the blackboard at my local coffee shop, ’Tasmanian Coffee Roaster’)” .
The theme of the festival is ‘Pavement Art through the Ages’ tracing the art form from its thinly documented roots to today’s current contemporary movements. I will be creating a 12 x 12 foot image on South Pineapple Ave, based on a the Japanese traditional story of the Dragon King.
I will be attending some instructional classes on street painting techniques from the internationally renowned artist Kurt Wenner (http://www.kurtwenner.com/street.htm), the innovator of 3D pavement art.
Before I head to Florida, I will spend a few days in New York, where I will attend the 125th Birthday of the Statue of Liberty. It should be heaps of fun.

Monday, September 12, 2011

PanPastels

Along with my experiments with the Artist Spectrum Pastels. I have been working with Pan Pastels. This image is from a large 3 part blackboard drawing.

The majority of this image was created with Pan Patels that were dry sponged onto the board. The rich colours are obvious, the only real problem I had was on another black board. I cleaned the board down with a sponge that was not so clean. It must of had some oil on it, as a result the Pan Pastles couldn't,t stick to the surface well enough to create any real density. I had to wipe the board down and start again.

I plan to experiment with the Pan Pastels on a road surface next. I will update this blog with the test results once I have them.



Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Waimea




As a part of my ongoing preparation for the Sarasota Chalk Festival in Florida, I am planning a number of practice works on tarmac/bitumen. I am doing this for a number of reasons. Firstly, I have never worked on such a rough surface or on such a large scale. So I need to see how long a drawing takes to do, how much chalk is needed and how physically hard it is to be squat down drawing for a period of time.
When trying to find a place to practice I started looking around town for good flat expanses of bitumen. I decided that the best place to start would be schools as that have a lot and if would be good to get the kids reaction to the drawings.
Above is my first practice work, this is at Waimea Heights Primary School. You can see that it is based on the design from a backboard practice image I have done (see below Monday August 15th, 2011). Working on this image I answered a lot of questions. 1. Bitumen in rough, it chews up your chalk, your knees and your hands. 2. Scale, this is about 15 feet in length; in Florida I will be drawing an image 12 foot x 12 foot, I’m feeling better about the scale now. 3. Time, It took about 2 hours to complete this image. 4. How much chalk is used, I used about 5 ½ jumbo soft pastels from Art Spectrum (http://www.artspectrum.com.au/soft_pastles.html). Fantastic colours, the red is so vibrant that it jumps out at you. 5. It is a very physical activity, after only 2 hours of being bent over and moving around squat down, I may have discovered the next exercise craze, move over Zumba, here comes Chalk Art. I can see that I will need to do more practice and start some exercises so that I can enjoy Florida, rather than just survive it!
Readers will be pleased to know, that after all that hard work. The fish looked good, the students liked it and now less than 24 hours later, as I write this, it is blowing a gale and the rain is coming down. So it will be little more than a smudge at the moment. I look forward to my next work on bitumen.

Monday, August 15, 2011

PracticeFish

I will be doing a lot of practice working leading up to the chalk festival in Sarasota, Florida. This is an image of a Japanese Koi. It is on black board and I am using an Australian soft pastel by Art Spectrum. For this image I have used the jumb sticks of colour, they are very rich and bright colours.


Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Vader

Still planning for America. I'm trying to scale up images at the moment. So I am practicing some Vader images to get a feel for working even bigger than normal

.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Sarasota

This image is from some of the planning sketches that I have started to work on for the Sarasota chalk festival in Florida. I am also practicing updating my blog from my new Acer iconia tablet, so far so good.


Monday, July 25, 2011

Sarasota



I've started planning my drawings for Sarasota in November. Above are to concepts that I've started with. i will update sketches and practice drawings as I work towards the Festival in November.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

sarasota

I'm pleased to say that I will be in Florida in November at the Sarasota Chalk Festival. I am the only Australian participating at the festival this year. I am planning an impressive 12foot x 12foot drawing. I will up date this blog with sketches and plan images soon.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

PUG403



Yesterdays chalkboard was based on a 1950's advert for a Peugeot 403. I have been working up this illustration as a part of roughs for a new picture book that Im working on. see my 'Flowers Ink' Blog for more sketches and details on that project.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Targa


Todays blackboard, as Targa Tasmania has just started and Tas Coffee Roasters sponsors one of the cars. I thought a classic car image would be good. Im also about to head off to the East Coast of Tasmania for a week and thought I would put a bit of extra effort in as this image will be on the board for over a week.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

ChalkAnime



A couple of images for Shayla. This are older images that show abit more what can be done with chalk detail and some images in stepped process.

It took me a while to get use to working on a black or dark back ground. As I many do illustration work on paper.

I hope you like these.

ChalkBlog








As I got a little snowed under towards the end of last year, I didn’t update any of the black board images I have been working on. I thought to save confusion I’d separate my chalk work off from my general illustration work, So hence the creation of ‘Chalk Flowers’.
I will post some more of my chalk board illustrations here and attempt to keep it updated and also include some process images.
The images above are some from the end of last year and start of this year.