"Festa Italiana Chalk Art" - San Mateo, Ca.

(left) Well that looks familiar? It's my chalk mural during my final year at the Art Institute of Seattle. (right) Here's the final product completed on Sunday.

Comparison: The Seattle mural was twice the size of the San Mateo mural, but I'm glad I was assigned a smaller square so I could concentrate on the details instead of the dimentions. I was also worried about the cracks in the asphalt, instead they added to the scales of the Koi. I love happy mistakes.

(below) I didn't have enough reference on the lilly-pad flowers, but I did enjoy adding them to this years mural.

(below) Olivia and I originally worked together on the the hi-lites, but the overall look was inconsistent. I thought Olivia had a real knack for hi-lites, so she offered to work on each lilly-pad while I finished up the ripples in the pond.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by to greet us throughout the day. We had a blast meeting you and answering your questions. Hope you enjoyed the parade and all the delicious foods & desserts... We did :)

Here's a photo from the first day results of the other sponsored artist.

So far, so good...

10:00AM - We arrived at the location and the heat was already getting to us. We checked in with the coordinator, recieved our chalks, slapped on the sun-block and hit the pavement.

Not sure how these cracks on the asphalt will affect the mural?

I was very glad Olivia offered to assist me on the mural. With this record setting heat wave on the West Coast, I'm not sure how we managed to to get as far as we did on the first day.

12:00pm - Lunch was kindly provided by the Festa Italiana Foundation - Thanks Julie!

3:00PM - The heat was at its' peak and we were feeling totally de-hydrated. We packed it up and headed anywhere we could find an ice cold mocha.

With 5 hours of work under our belts, we knew what we would be up against on Sunday. So we better get back here pretty early in the morning if we want to add the amount of detail we originally planned on doing for the lilly-pads.

Majority of fellow artist and friends are already in San Diego for the big "Comic-Con" event this weekend. For the past week everyone has been scrambling to get thier art books prepared and shipped on time. And by the looks of thier blogs, everyone's print jobs and shipping went well.

I won't be attending this years "Comic-Con", but I've decided to do a bit of scrambling myself. I've managed to squeeze in (on a last minutes notice) as a chalk artist for this weekends San Mateo Festa Italiana Chalk Art Event. I had another aquatic design in mind but decided last night to just replicate my "Koi Pond". I'll keep the overall vibrant colors but hope to add more detail on the Koi and Lilypads. I ran out of time during the previous Chalk Art event, so I'm crossing my fingers.

I hired a close Graphic Design friend to design and print about 50 self-promotion brochures to hand-out during Sunday's event. Included are samples of my watercolor sketches, line art, a small blurb on "Sketchcrawl" and a small bio on the back.

Have a great weekend everyone!

de Young Museum

I missed out on Sketchcrawl #7, when the San Francisco group visited the de Young Museum in the Golden Gate Park. I finally had a chance to check it out over the weekend and saw all the amazing African masks and Guatemalan artifacts. There's even a wall dedicated to the history of "etching". Such an interesting process. Here's a couple of masks I was able color up. I'll post more soon.

"Skull of reliquary"
19th century human skull,
shell, cloth and rattan.
(from the Gulf of Papay)

"Head of diety"
(from Guatamala) made of Jadeite.

Our friend from San Diego flew into town for the 4th of July weekend and the Okuda's hosted a "Fry Party". Menu: Spam Masubi, lumpia, calamari, yams, taro, mushrooms and Korean chicken.

The sketch above was a bowl of tempura sauce and a large bottle of Plum Sake.