The Art of Chalk
“Things change when you decide to become a professional.
In olden times I used to draw because I liked it; now
things are done with an eye to commercial concerns -
primarily, ‘Will anybody give a crap about this enough
to actually buy it?!’”
“Art is about an artist connecting with an audience. The
world wants its artists to climb above the treeline,
slay the dragon, then come back to tell the tale.”
“They don’t want their artists to slap some muck
together, and stand there complaining that ‘nobody gets
them’. “
“I understand that, and I’m convinced that the ONLY
reason I’m able to earn my bread and cheese by
exploiting my aptitudes is because I place a priority on
my client’s interests.”
“And yet…what about my interests? Spontaneity is vastly
overrated…but what am I to do without any? At what point does
drawing devolve into ‘a job’, instead of being art? Am I
in danger of being one of those artists that just
panders to a fickle public? Is my art authentic?”
“I had gotten to the point where being an artist had gotten me
stuck. I enjoyed what I did, I took pride in my art, and
I could find satisfying challenges everywhere, but I was
concerned that my career had been somehow pre-determined
and mapped out for me, and somehow I didn’t seem to have
any say in it anymore.”
“I was having one of my periods of career funk when we
were over at The Colonel’s cousins for dinner. Their
kids were drawing on the driveway with a big bucket of
chalk, and they nagged me into joining them.”
"At first it was like pulling teeth, but I saw that this
chalk thing was the exact opposite of pencil. With
pencil, you can’t draw white; you have to work around
the white parts.”
“But chalk was a revelation…for the first time since I’d
donned the mantle of Professional Artist, I could
actually draw white and leave the black bits.”
“It gave me ‘fresh eyes’. For the next couple of hours
drawing became a challenge again, an experiment…even
fun!”
“And back in my studio
(The Mine, as we call it) I began
experimenting with different media to draw on, finally
settling on black acid free mat board. It’s got a
perfect amount of ‘tooth’ or texture to it that holds
onto the chalk.”
“Chalk is a terrific challenge that recharges my art
batteries. It’s messy as heck, and hard to work with,
and nearly impossible to render detail with, but it
gives a level of dynamism and contrast that can’t be
achieved with pencil alone.”