25 in 25; #1- Participate in Chalk the Block

Here's the deal; I turned 25 years old 4 days ago.  About 2 months ago I decided I wanted to create a 25 in 25 bucket list.  The first thing on my list was "participate in Chalk the Block".  It may have been on my list simply because I was already registered for it, and it fell on my birthday, but it seemed like  a good way to start out 25.

Chalk the Block is a chalk art festival held in Provo, Utah at the Shops at Riverwoods.  Each artist is given a parking space and are required to cover 8 ft by 8 ft of it in chalk.  I saw that registration was open a few months ago and told Courtney that she should sign up for it.  She told me she would only sign up for it if I did it with her.  So the decision was made, I would participate in Chalk the Block.  I was planning on just letting Courtney do the drawing and I could help color, seemed like a good plan.  Courtney had other ideas, she wanted me to do some of the drawing as well.  The theme for Chalk the Block was "From Sea to Shining Sea".  At first we wanted to draw Lilo and Stitch, then we wanted to do ocean animals, then we talked about doing Finding Nemo.  We finally met a week before Chalk the Block to decide what we were going to do.  We found a picture from Finding Nemo that we liked and thought we could replicate.

Thursday, September 17.  I had to work so I couldn't get down to Provo until about 2:00, Courtney had gotten there at 10:00, left, and then went back about 1:00.  When I got there Courtney had drawn out a grid and then started drawing some coral.  I started drawing an octopus, and after I finished that I drew a fish.   That was as far as I got on Thursday before I headed home.




Friday, September 18.  My birthday.  I got down to Provo about 10:30 or 11:00 and started drawing.  Courtney had added a sand bank after I left the night before, so I drew an eel and added in a little more sand and some water.   At 12:00 I left our space to go have lunch with Tammi, but when  I got to the Provo Beach Resort Tammi surprised me by inviting Ashley and Mari along.  We had a nice lunch at Bajio and then they came back to see our progress on our picture.  After they left Courtney and I attacked it with full force.  At some point that afternoon Cassi and her family came by to see what we were drawing and wish me a happy birthday.  It was about 7:00 or so and Courtney and I looked at our photo and realized we had a large space that really needed something added to it.  I came up with the idea of adding a sunken ship in to take up a large space.  So at 7:00 I sketched out a rough looking ship, but then Courtney came in and made it look 100 times better.  After she finished drawing it I started to color it in while she finished some coral, when she was done with that she started to color in the boat as well.  It was 8:30 pm by the time we finished for the day.  We didn't know how the boat looked and if our colors blended well together or not.

   

Saturday, September 19.  I wasn't supposed to get down to Provo until close to noon on Saturday, but  I got there about 11:00 and started working.  I think I added a crab before Courtney made it.  During the night some water ran through the middle of our picture so Courtney touched that up and I added some lines on the boat.  Courtney did a lot of finishing touches, shading, and blending colors on the lower half of the picture, and I started to add in all of the blue for the water.  We had to be finished with our art by 3:00 pm, we finished at 2:54.  Six minutes to spare.  We tried to win the award for "Best Use of Color", we didn't win anything, but we were happy with our result.

A few fun facts:  We didn't  use the grid system that was drawn, and we didn't have a photo to go off of, we just started to add things in here and there.  I was drawing cartoon animals, while Courtney was drawing realistic corals, at the beginning we weren't sure how that would look, but the more details we added the more it came together.  Because we didn't have a picture to go off of we started working from the bottom up, and then we went from the center, out.  Eventually we ran out of good places to sit without sitting on our drawings.  I needed to add some fish up at the top so I ended up drawing them upside down, since I was sitting at the very very top of the space.  Neither Courtney or I had ever done a picture so large, I had never worked with chalk, and Courtney hadn't used it a whole lot.  We were very much amateur's going in to this event, we still are.  But we now know that we have what it takes to finish and we are planning on doing it again next year.