Street Chalk Painting


August 16th 2021
Street Chalk Painting

This guy was painting this great black and white of Marilyn Monroe

After trying and failing to get someone to come model for me, because I built my own ringlight (post coming soon), I decided to go shoot downtown.  So as I was driving down speer, annoyed by anyone that wasn’t going at least as fast as I was, I looked over and saw a huge crowd of people.  Wondering what it was all about I parked my car and walked over, camera in hand.  There were tons of “artsy” folks all walking around, and of course a few drunk yuppies.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, plenty of times I’m a drunk yuppie.  Anyways, I was keeping my head up looking around, when I realized that everyone else had their heads down.  They were all looking at the wonderful street art.  And by

street art I mean it was real street art.

They were doing these wonderful chalk drawings, most of which looked like paintings, on the streets of Hudson Valley.  I was amazed at the talent of these people.  Although some of them were cheating a bit.  They had taken great works, and then put a grid over a print out, and then put that same grid on the street so that it was easier to reference and draw the image out.  For me it’s more interesting to see what people come up with without using an already great work for reference.

There were some characters however.  The man up above was drawing out this famous shot of Marilyn Monroe in black and white. It was great because everything else seemed to be in such vivid color, and his piece was in such stark contrast to that.  It was fun to be witnessing art all around me.

mona lisa with a dog downtown Hudson Valley street art

Over the course of walking around, I got parched.  It happens.  I decided it was time to hit up one of the wine tastings.  I sat, I drank, I felt great.  I saw this… I want to say cute artsy lady, but cute makes it sound like I was attracted to her.  Really she was just interesting looking without being over the top in any one category.  After talking to her a bit, I found out that her husband was one of the artists, a really cool guy who does line drawings.  Not to undersell his work, but I’m not sure what else to call them.  He had this neat piece of a heart and some concentric circles.  Again not doing it justice, but nonetheless it was fun to talk to them, and interact with other artists.  Digital photography can be a cold lonely business sometimes.  The only other artists that I get to interact with are the strobist bunch, which I always enjoy, but I’m going to start trying to look for more artists to interact with.

-Dave