Jeanne Guerin-Daley's Art Adventures: Street Painting Chalk Art at Tabor Days

Well, the weather for Day Two of the Tabor Days festival in Doylestown was much more cooperative and conducive to street painting with chalk than was Day One! It was a glorious day.

Here are the results of our efforts:

This i's what Saturday's rain left me of the previous days work:

Because Sunday's day would be short, an earlier start allowed me to get right to work . I skipped redoing the grid, since I had a ghost of the image there, and just redrew in the puppy freehand. He came along pretty quickly.

Then I recreated the boy playing in the mud blocking in the yellows, browns and blues, and laid in some tan for the mud puddle.

That bright yellow sweatshirt he had on, was a real challenge. I'd get it nice and bright; then after working on the mud areas for awhile, I noticed that the wind blew a lot of the darker colors over onto the yellow and I'd have to keep adding more yellows and whites to keep it bright looking.

The little boy has hands now!
Here, I've added shadows in the folds of his clothes, laid in some more mud in front, as well as some turquoise blue in the background indicating the mud puddle in the background reflecting the sky as the puppy looks on. There was also a turtle that kept an eye on all of us Madonnarians that day. See if you can find him in the next photo!

"Mud Fun" completed!

It was already after 2pm when this was finished on Sunday. The festival was to go until 4. The rain had set us back behind schedule but I was determined to make the time to turn my second sketch into a chalk reality!

So with a minor adjustment, I managed to get it in. See below...

Here is my sketch.
This was created ahead of time, when I didn't yet know anything about the type of surface on which we would be working. My vision was of a light-colored sidewalk drawing in the darker cracks on which the ant hill and the dandelion sit.

But now, knowing how black the actual surface was, and with the time remaining so short, it was time for some adjustment! I decided to simplify it by allowing the asphalt to become the background. I had to make the ants lighter in color in order for them to show up too.

Flexibility is key sometimes!

This second one was done very quickly. I think my favorite part is where this time,. the wind kind of helped. Look how the wind has blown part of the dandelion puff away!

Completed works!