Link to my original post: Sky Painting Show opens this Friday July 10

This was one of my favorite projects from years of chalk painting in San Diego’s Little Italy every October until leaving for Pittsburgh last year. This was tight, the trompe l’oeil light and shadow detail on the tooth of San Diego asphalt; I ground a lot of chalk into fine dust that day to build up the shadow color layers rather than just faking them with a solid color. I’m a huge fan of Michelangelo and the whole Renaissance transition of society and culture, so Italian themed events are an easy to get up for.

I’ve always liked this picture from the very first day of chalk painting I ever did, back when the annual chalk painting event in Little Italy was called Chalk La Strada and lots of skilled artists came out to have a go.
 
Predictably, I didn’t screw around much my first time, taking on a Botticelli Madonna and generating a full size drawing on paper ahead of time (9′ x 12′) to make a pouncefor transferring the drawing to my chunk of pavement in the original production style of Renaissance Italian fresco murals. Perfecting the drawing beforehand and simply transferring it to its final surface is a particular kind of time saver, like when your fresco plaster is setting up or when the chalk festival only runs two days-- its what makes chalk painting a performance art more than anything else.
 
This photo was taken not quite half way through the first day, with the complete outline visible in white.

A fun picture of my first chalk painting piece in Little Italy’s annual chalk festival, back in the day when your image was 9′ x 12′ and you really had to bust it to finish by Sunday afternoon. This Botticelli Madonna was, naturally, a bigger challenge than I anticipated, but biting off as much as I could possibly chew is how I’ve always pushed myself where I want to go. I chalked at the Little Italy Festa seven years in a row before moving to Pittsburgh in the fall of 2009.

I’ve been keeping track of the mural project at Cafe Mundo here in Banker’s Hill with my iPhone and some instant real time publishing through my pages on Facebook and Twitter, so I thought I’d catch up some our progress here before heading over to for this morning’s session.

I’ve been very pleased to work with artist Jessica Siemens, who you may remember I mentored earlier this spring in marketing her excellent work via blogging and social media on the way to her first “art fair” appearance in April at Little Italy’s ArtWalk. (For more detail on that, search for articles on Jessica over on the San Diego Finishing School site.)

Anyway, we’ve been having a blast getting to paint together (rather than working on marketing paintings together:) and we’ve been accompanied off and on by my babies, Hunter (4) and Logan (2)-- no, they don’t have their own websites yet-- so I hope you enjoy these pictures.

In all the rush of the decision to move and the finishing of San Diego projects and commitments, I forgot to post any pictures of the show of my sky paintings that continues at Joe Bedford’s Coalesce Gallery on India Street in Little Italy.

Paintings by John Hiemstra, furniture by Joe Bedford

John Hiemstra and Joe Bedford at Coalesce Gallery, Little Italy