How2StreetPaint.com

Denver Street Painting Festival

This weekend I did an original illustration I painted back in College. It is a children's illustration based on a Robert Louis Stevenson poem called 'My Bed is a Boat".

My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor's coat
And starts me in the dark.

At night I go on board and say
Good-night to all my friends on shore;
I shut my eyes and sail away
And see and hear no more.

And sometimes things to bed I take,
As prudent sailors have to do;
Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
Perhaps a toy or two.

All night across the dark we steer;
But when the day returns at last,
Safe in my room beside the pier,
I find my vessel fast.

I took my original painting and skewed the entire boat, including the boy, in perspective based on my vanishing point. The vanishing point was placed in the photoshop file 5 inches below the bottom of the green frame. This allowed me to stretch the boat and boy to fit the lines I drew from the vanishing point below.

The street painting was 10 x 14 feet with the vanishing point 5 feet below and directly center.

The Golden Apple

For this years Santa Barbara festival painted "The Golden Apple". I designed the image after seeing Sofia Coppola's "Marie Anionette". I found a beautiful painting by David titled "Portrait of Anne Marie Louise" and that is what I used as my general reference. You can see the resemblance.
I made her dress a little less modest and her chair, or thrown, larger and more regal.

More Mermaids

I will be doing a street painting for the Vero Beach Art Museum Community Celebration.  They will have a new Trompe L' Oeil exhibit on display so I will be painting a 3D image.  I have designed something special for this event.  We had suggestions from the community on the subject of my street painting.  Most of the ideas revolved around the beach theme so I thought I would  design  another mermaid painting.  I did a mermaid painting a few months ago in Houston and just wasn't that happy with the finished painting so I am really looking forward to making this one so much better.

I have included specific elements from the paintings on dislpay in the Trompe L' Oeil exhibit.  A key, butterflies, postcards and photos, and pearls.   The painting will also include the florida state bird, a waterfall,  and two seahorse columns carved of stone. 

http://www.vbmuseum.org/index.cfm?method=Events.EventDetail&ID=239

Bronze Medal!!

This past August I took a trip to Europe with my dad. It was his first time in the countries we explored...Germany, Austria, and Italy. While in Italy, I competed for the 4th time in the original, international street painting festival. It was nice to be back after missing the 2005 event. I composed an image called the Ascencion. I included two angels that I had painted before in my image of Pope John Paul to frame the top of the image. The face of Jesus with a crown of thorns was the focal point of the painting. I found a drawing by Italian artist Guido Reni and thought it would make a beautiful street painting. I think it turned out great.

I won a Bronze Medal in the Maestri Level.

The Prayer

Here is the finished piece from San Rafael this weekend.
I am really happy with the results.  Wish I had time to fill in the corners with
a cool border but I was spent.  I'm still recovering from the last few weeks. 
I love street painting but 5 in a row is rough.

But really, it's all worth it.  I actually gave up my 'very comfy salary' job at
South Park (yes, the one on Comedy Central) for a street painting festival.
I just can't give it up.  It makes me so happy to be out on the street painting.
Maybe it's an ego thing, haven't quite figured it out yet but I'll let you know
when I do ;)   Whatever the reason it is for a good cause.  All the proceeds of
most street painting festivals goes to a charity.  Usually children's charities to
keep art in schools and after school programs. 

Well, I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions you have about my work,
street painting itself, or the site.  And please sign up for the newsletter in the
top right corner.  I'd like to set up some workshops in the LA and OC areas so
if you're interested in learning how to street paint then sign up.  Just your
name and email address.  Thanks.

San Rafael Street Painting Festival

Driving up to the San Rafael festival this weekend.  Really great event!  I'm excited to participate again.  I was the featured artist last year and did a huge involved painting that I almost didn't finish in time.  But I had wonderful help and we got it done.  You can see the wonderful job my friend Jim did on the fruit and vase in the foreground.  Beautiful!

This year I'm going for something a little more simple. 
A painting by my favorite artist Bouguereau called The Prayer.
Isn't it lovely?

street Painting in Santa Barbara

Allegory on the Asphalt

The featured artist is usually given the opportunity to begin there painting early because it is usaully a larger image.  This year I was suppose to have two people assisting and at the last minute they weren't able to come.  So now I am on my own with a huge and very detailed painting to do.  So to complete this 12' x 16' painting I will begin on Tuesday - 4 days before the festival begins. 

Tuesday

12:30 I begin creating my square on the blank asphalt.   Festivals  usually have all the squares marked out for you when you arrive but because I started so early I they hadn't begun yet.  Of course, I'd much rather have the experts mark out the perfect 12 x 16 foot rectangle for me but alas I had to figure it out on my own.  I marked a row of tic marks 1 foot from the bottom of the last step of the mission assuming that they were level and straight.  I centered my square with the mission doors and marked out all 4 sides. 

Once that was done I chalked my grid and began the drawing.  I drew in all the figures and major elements.  Because I will be painting on my own I need to leave my options open.  If I don't draw in all the background elements just yet it will allow me to leave something out if I run out of time.  This way no one will notice if I paint it out.

Tip:  Is Your Square Square?

I checked to make sure the 12 x 16 foot rectangle I made was actually 'square' and not skewed by measuring from the top left corner to the bottom right (the diagonal).  Then measure te opposite- Top right corner to bottom left.  If the measurements are the same for both diagonals then your square is indeed square. 


Wednesday

I started at 9:30am.  A little late, had to hunt down a Jamba Juice ;) I decided to begin painting the image of the Madonna and Child that sits on the easel.  This is an important element to the painting and resides in the top left corner so it is easy to work down and out from.

Painting the canvas made it necessary to begin the 'artist' figure because her arm is outstretched across it.  I was also able to fill in almost a whole square foot with black.  Easy!  It's great to be able to fill in a large amount of space quickly especially when it takes 3 hours to paint something like a face which is half the size.  It all balances out in the end.  You can see that in comparing the two photos of the Madonna, the 2nd is a bit faded.  This happens over the course of a festival.  Any sort of breeze or wind will blow one color into the next and mute everything just a bit.  This will be fine because I'd rather the figures stand out more than the canvas.

Thursday

Thursday morning I painted in the face and head of the harpist and began all the drapery.  The green fabric on the artist's arm is my favorite.  I used a lime green for highlights which really made it pop. 

Friday

Ready to finish all the drapery on the two main figures.  Lots of white drapery on the harpist...My recipe...lots of white, cream, yellow ochre, light blue, brown, and some gray.  The light blue overlapping the yellow ochre to create open shadow tones.  I will domonstrate this in a 'drapery demo' I will complete for next weeks post.

Saturday - Monday

Ok...Crunch time.  I have to get this done!  This is when I start to get worried about finishing my image.  It was important for me to finish my painting by 2pm on Monday so that photos can be taken before the shadow from the mission reaches it.  Once that happens you have to wait till the shadow completely covers the painting.  You can't take a picture with half the photo in shadow.  You can see the umbrella shadow in some of the pics above and it darkens the area so much it is almost unreadable. 

And the Finish...

Mark and I finished at noon on Monday!!!!  That was really early for a featured artist in Santa Barbara.  It was so nice to be finished after working so hard for 6 days.  Mark and I were so tired and sore from sittin, kneeling, and bouncing around the 12 x16 ft. square. 

Freyja Comes to Life

"Freyja"

This is the image I chose to paint in La Strade Dell' Arte.
It is 'Freyja' the Norse goddess of love.

Based on the proportions of this painting I decided on a 15 x 10 foot street painting.  The first thing I did was take the image into Photoshop and made the file 15 x 10 inches.  Then using Photoshops line tool I created a grid by drawing a line on every inch mark.  Then I printed the whole image on 13 x 19 inch photo paper.  If you are not able to print this size you can 'fit to paper'  when you do to print and it will fit your image on whatever size paper you have.  This way your image and grid will be scaled together  automatically. 

Lastly I cut and paste anything I need close ups of onto a new file.  I scale them up so that I have a better detailed view of them all while painting.  This is a must for me.  I like to have more detail than I will include so that I may suggest it on the street.

The Festival

Here is a board the festival put up near my painting.  This is nice because it not only includes an image of the painting I was doing, the title, but also a description of the paintings subject.  This was nice because people could read about the image before viewing the street painting and saved me from having to explain it several times over the course of the weekend.  Don't get me wrong, talking to viewers is one of my favorite parts of street painting but explaining the same thing over and over can be a little less than fun ;)

Step 1:  Measure

So I arrived on Friday morning and found my 10 x 15 foot square.  The festival draws out the squares ahead of time so artists can begin first thing when they arrive. To begin the gridding process I lay out a tape measure along one side of the square and mark each foot.  In this case it was 15 feet on two sides and 10 feet on the other two sides.  Try and be precise as possible when marking the feet so that your grid lines will be perfectly square. 

Step 2: Grid

Once they are all marked out I can begin with my chalk line.  Here are pictures of my grid after I chalked the lines.  The 10 x 15 foot square creates 150 square feet of image to cover.  This is slightly larger than a 12 x 12 foot square which would be 144 square feet.

Step 3:  The Drawing

Once my grid is finished I begin the drawing.  I always begin with the face of the main figure and work out from there.  I try and move from the top down so that I do not have to sit on my work if I don't have to.

Step4:  Painting

I begin painting the face of Freyja.  I usually start with the forhead of the face and continue down to the eyes, nose, cheeks and mouth.  I had two assistants helping me with the background sky.  They did a great job painting in a nice gradation from a sea blue to white.  The colors are brighter than in the original painting.  I like to pump up the colors a bit from the original because over the couse of the weekend the wind will blow and colors will fade. 

I continue to paint through the neck and down to the drapery.  The drapery usually goes pretty quick for me because it doesn't have to look exactly like the original.  It just has to suggest the same movement and character.  You can compare what I painted to the original image to see that I have painted the cream colored cloth similar to the original but not exact.

My first Cherub was a nice warm up for the 5 others I needed to paint.  You can see that I started with the top of the head and worked down into the neck.  You can see in the 3rd picture that I am painting the areas of the cherub that are closest to the 'Freyja' figure so that I can continue out and down from the central figure. 

'Freyja's' skirt was an easy break from the figures.  Again, because it is fabric it doesn't have to be exactly like the original image.  I like to work fairly quickly on the drapery because it is very forgiving and allows me to make up some time if I fussed too much with the figures.   

The second cherub was pretty quick and easy because it was a profile.  Profiles are always much easier.  The body was also a quick paint. I enjoy large areas of skin.  Little chubby cherubs are fabric free and have all those subtle shifts of luscious colors.

This is as far as I was able to get before the rain started. Luckily I have the photos to remember it by.