Case Study:Temporary Community Art
Usage Overview:
3D chalk art is a fabulous way to increase community engagement, drive excitement for a special event, and commemorate seasonal openings. Chalk is a great tool for purposefully temporary art, because it’s removed with an ordinary power washer, leaving the “canvas” surface with no trace.
Project Specifics:
A gift of love for my local Santa Monica neighborhood, this 20′ long chalk art scene features festival holiday treats that appear to stand up off the pavement. Neighborhood families brought kids and pups to take pictures sitting on top of the candy cane or on the gumpdrop stools. That community action is what really brings all the fun to chalk art.
Process:
Anamorphic, or 3D street projects are such a joy to undertake. An engaging mix of Artistry, engineering, and magic, they bring as much sparkly delight to be as a maker as I see in the neighborhood families that interact with them.
For me, they always involve advanced planning. I create the image I want people to see in Procreate, Photoshop, Affinity or some other image manipulation tool.
I then lay a chalk grid of some sort down on the area to be chalked, and snap a photo from the desired viewpoint where I was the 3d effect to work. This is key with this approach, there’s one viewing spot, where, when seen through a camera lens, the illusion will really jump into space.
By laying my drawing over the photo I’ve taken of my pavement surface and using some perspective distortions, I can create a new drawing guide for myself. These images are really really stretched out in real life to create the image of standing up… the candy cane you see here that looks like maybe it might be as tall as me if I stood up (5’4″) – it’s actually 20 feet long!
Once I have my distorted drawing, painting and chalking happen just as they would on an ordinary scale canvas, with a lot more crawling around on the ground, sore back muscles, and elbow grease!
Outcomes
These pieces are entirely for joy and excitement. This particular piece I shared on my local Facebook Buy Nothing group… posting a photo and the location, as a photo opportunity gift for the families around me. So much appreciation poured in from my immediate community, my heart was warmed all season.