Forest Grove Chalk Art Festival

Each year a local art gallery, Valley Art, hosts the chalk art festival. Last year was our first year attending (see).  Downtown Forest Grove gets blocked off and all the sidewalk squares are up for rent.  With your reserving fee you also get a box of artists chalk.  None of the big chunky little kid sidewalk chalk, although that stuff would be good to have if you need a lot of one color.  The art lasts for at least a month, if not more, depending on how much rain we get.  Some of the darker colors, or thicker colors will last through lots of rain.

Each year the chalk art festival coincides with the corn roast.  I'm thinking they do that on purpose so they are blocking off streets less often. I think next year we'll do more stuff there, we just walked through as we were leaving today.  Elmo was at the corn roast, but he wandered around the chalk art saying hi to all the little kids, and we got to meet him!!

Me, our friend, and Elmo.


Carus, her friend, and Elmo.


Anyhoo.  Unlike last year when it was cool and rainy, this year was warm and sunny!  The day started out nice and cool, but it didn't take long for the sun to pop out and really start to bake us.  I have a little bit of a sun burn to prove it!

Carus chose a sketch out of my sketch book and that is what we did.
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Gramma Barb came out to draw with us.  Here she is with her finished moon.


Things we MUST remember next year:

• Canopy/large umbrella.  Rain or shine, this would come in handy!
• Knee pads or gardening pads.  This year I brought towels to kneel on thinking they would work good enough - they helped but they were not good enough.  My knees are so sore.
• A chalk blending method other than our hands and fingers.  Carus gave herself a couple little blisters on her fingers rubbing on the concrete, and my palms are sore.
• Small broom to remove the dirt and leaves from the square before we start.  I kept getting splinters from bark mulch debris.  Annoying. 

Gramma and Carus took a break after we'd been there about 45 minutes or so and went around taking pictures.  Of course we did not get a shot of every square, but you can see what I did get here or just watch the slideshow below.