I received a call from the Pandora Group, a marketing company out of New York City who asked if I could travel to Bristol, Connecticut and make one of my 3D chalk murals for an ESPN event at Lake Compounce Amusement Park. ESPN rents out the entire park for a day and invites 3,000 to 5,000 employees and guests to an end-of-the-summer picnic. Even though this bumped right up against another show that started the very next day on the other side of the country, it sounded like a great time so I agreed. Little did I know that the beginning of September would decide to throw us a little mid-July heat wave for the two days I would be working on this mural.

I arrived early Wednesday after a nearly 4 hour drive, and with the help of the exceptionally friendly and helpful park staff, found my location at the entrance and began my work. The first few hours were during the hottest part of the day, and with sweat dripping off me I began the process of creating the outline and proper viewing point to generate the 3D chalk mural effect. The entire time, my camera sat on a tripod behind me recording my time lapse video of the artwork. The park staff were kind enough to provide me with a 10′ tent, but unfortunately I had to use that to protect my camera equipment from the blazing sun and could not enjoy the shade myself as I worked.

By the end of the first day I had completed the framework of the mural and started the coloring. I wouldn’t really see the final 3D effect come together until mid-afternoon on the second day as my artwork’s shadows were designed to be accurate with the sun direction at that time of day in that precise location. I was able to do this using photographs taken on-site by my contact at the marketing firm and e-mailed to me. I generated my mock-up based on these photos, and ended up getting my light source about as accurate as I could have hoped.

The park opened at 11 am on Thursday, and I finished the mural at about 1 pm. This timing was on purpose as we decided I should be making the artwork for at least a portion of the time that people were walking past and going into the event. Unfortunately, due to my cross-country flight that I needed to catch from the Hartford airport, I was only able to stick around for about an hour and see crowd reaction. People liked the work, but when I showed them how it looked when they took a photograph, I finally got the impressed reaction I was looking for. I hope everyone at the event got to enjoy this mural, and if you attended and saw it in person, please let me know what you thought in my comment section below. Thanks!