Wild at Heart Illustration: Sweet Chalk Festival 2015

The Sweet Chalk Festival in Lockport, NY was once again a great experience! This was my 3rd year as a featured artist. Seeing this event grow from the beginning has been remarkable. This year it was easily tripled in size. Ellen Martin and event organizers were once again amazing and I'm so proud of them! There were so much talent present this year. I took a ton of pictures!!!

This year I chose a marine subject. My piece this year was 6ft x 8ft in size (the biggest one I have done to date). I illustrated an under the sea view of two seahorses. I love doing ocean scenes because it allows creative liberty with dramatic lighting. Sea horses come in all shapes and sizes and some even look alien. I will be drawing a Hippocamus Erectus or "Lined Seahorse."

Here are some images I drew inspiration from:

(I do not own or claim to own these images. I Googled them.)

Some fun seahorse facts: Seahorses mate for life, they can camouflage, males carry the eggs in their pouches, they are slow swimmers, and the Lined Seahorses in particular live all along the East Coast from Nova Scotia, Canada to the South Americas. I have found myself envious of the sea horse, the males can carry the babies, I am 21 weeks pregnant and find this an intriguing concept.

Due to the size of this year's piece I decided to forgo a full size trace. Last year we had wind issues and I didn't want to repeat that frustration either. I did however measure out my grid on a normal piece of paper and then did a trial run in my driveway. I found that I completely miscalculated how many squares I had. Oops.

I used a 9x12 grid. Each square was 8 inches.

July 11th, 2015-Day 1 of the Sweet Chalk Festival

My super fan (Mom) helped me get the grid down. We fought with the awning/shade tent (I didn't want to burn this year-still did anyway somehow but it definitely helped with the temperature) We measured out the grid and use a chalk line to set it straight. Once it was in place I went over the lines with a brighter chalk. This part of the process is easily the most difficult and not fun.

My Mom kept me company for most of the day as I laid down the base color. I used Prismacolor NuPastels for most of my piece. I did have some Master's Touch brand pastels left over from last year as well. The difference between the too is the dust factor. Prismacolors stick easier and hold pigment. Master's Touch can create a "wash out" look but will crumble quicker.

End of Day 1-Base Color Down

July 12th, 2015-Day 2 of the Sweet Chalk Festival

My husband, Tim, helped me set up. Artists got their official shirts for the event. I didn't waste much time, after stuffing doughnuts in my face, and jumped into shading. I started from left to right to stay in the shade as the hours ticked by. I deepened shadows, created spine texture on the golden sea horse and brought dimension to the weeds. I had family stop in to say hello throughout the day. My Dad, sister and her boyfriend also stopped to keep me company around lunch time. My muscles started to ache and it was helpful to have someone else hop around and get me chalk pieces.

I raced to finish the right side of the piece. I added spines and fin to the larger sea horse, brought to attention the light filtering from the surface making the coral above a silhouette, and added texture the the lower coral. I set the piece with good ol' Aqua Net hairspray. You may still see this days from now.

The finished illustration: