Sometimes I am asked to appear as a chalk artist at giant conventions like the New York Comic Con or the Otakon in Baltimore. But I also really enjoy making appearances at smaller, local events. I was recently asked to come to an elementary school art show and make a chalk art drawing. I would work on it over the course of about 2 and a half hours for the kids to watch while they looked at the rest of the show. The idea is that an artist showing their work in progress will inspire the kids to make more art themselves, and maybe try a different style then they normally might have otherwise.
Since I love comic book art, I went looking for an image with a few criteria:
- It had to be a well known character.
- It had to be as non-violent as possible (these were elementary school kids after all.)
- It had to be something I could complete in about two hours.
I settled on a stylized image of Captain America from Marvel Comics. This came from a variant cover of Avengers/Invaders #7 and was drawn by Pascal Ferry. Even though the full image is a group shot of a number of characters including Spider Man, The Human Torch and the Submariner, I pulled out just the central figure of Captain America for the drawing.
The final image was 3 feet wide by just under 6 feet tall. It took about 2 hours and 20 minutes to get done (just under the wire) and was a big hit with both students and parents alike. Here is a gallery of images from the night showing both my progress and the completed piece. My thanks goes out to everyone there, I had a fantastic time.
