Lots of stuff going on today, including Awards at the end of the night! Make sure you read to the end to see how that went.
Let's get started!
I left the house to head to Pasadena, and Theresa followed with Alli a short time later.
Ruston arrived at the Paseo around 8am and was happy to find that our overnight protection worked great!
And Jacob is here too!
Now all the chalks we've been collecting for the past 5 years are organized.
Hey! It's our neighbors Tom and Abby! It's great to see people you know!
Not once, but twice, there were people who asked if we did commissions, wanting a large version of the castle somewhere. An IP lawyer happened to be nearby one of those times and gave us some information on the legality of it all.
This whole time we've been working in dress clothes, we've stayed surprisingly clean. Our neighbor Randall just didn't think we were getting into it enough, so he came over to give me a fist-bump and then gave me a big chalky black smudge on the back of my hand.
A few minutes later he brought a wet wipe over to me so we can still project that clean Disney image.
Event photographer Brian Biery is serious about getting up high and taking photos straight down.
Alli is here! Let's take a picture together!
I took a time-lapse, but since we completed so much on the first day, it's mostly just seeing people walk by after the first 10 seconds.
It's become a bit of a tradition to eat lunch at Islands. And to pay, we're using the Islands gift card we won last year!
Let's go check out some art! I'll do another post that has just a bunch of murals from the weekend with minimal commentary, but here's some of my favorites with Alli.
This Monsters Inc mural looked amazing. Like there was a giant sticker that someone just placed on the ground. Amazing colors and very true to the original photo.
On Sunday there's a classic car show and the police bring a bunch of their vehicles too.
Back when cars were made out of wood.
Alli made a lot of artists smile.
Alli - Daddy! Look at the pink flower! Take my picture in front of it!
Ian would have loved this space themed mural.
Now that is a lot of ladybugs.
Alli loves the Disney princesses. I thought this Ariel looked great.
Where is this Alli?
Paris! It's the Eiffel Tower!
She was very demanding when it came to taking pictures. Daddy! Take a picture of this one!
And get a picture of this one!
You have to take a picture of this one.
By 2pm we were done walking around and it was time to wrap up our mural.
Again normally Ian would be helping, but Alli pulled up all the tape just fine.
She was a very good helper.
Pulling up the tape make some nice sharp lines. And once we took down the umbrella people can take a nice clean picture of it without all the crazy shadows.
Nice job Ruston! Another memorable year!
Time for Alli to head back home. Thanks for coming up and seeing us!
Bye Uncle Jacob.
Now that Ruston and I are done, we're going to chat with all the other artists. Plus we've got to vote for our favorites! There's 10 different categories to vote on, and we want to make sure we see them all.
Shaina Joel is putting the finishing touches on Tony Stark, and it's looking great.
We ran into the Doo Dah queen yet again. She was much more excited to see us today because Doo Dah is all about creativity and dressing up. And that's exactly the spirit we have been portraying. She suggested we need to put that creativity to work and sign up for the Doo Dah parade in November too.
We hung around for the Silent Auction finale. I'll cover that in another post.
Yuji Baba has done a great job this year with his x-wing pilot Luke Skywalker. That R2 is very appropriate with this mural.
Looks like we're not the only ones in costume this year. Captain America is making an appearance.
Where do we go from here? Mars? It's a brave new world.
The rest of the time we spent chatting with other artists. Hearing some of the difficulties they had, giving suggestions to the new artists about things they could do the next year. Our main recommendation is to put down that base coat. It helps so much with everything after that.
At 7:20pm, Tom Coston took the microphone at the main stage and invited everyone to gather around for awards.
Lexie Williamson came running down with her laptop after putting all the finishing touches on the powerpoint presentation.
Like I said, there's 10 different categories.
- Best in Chalk of Fame (near the movie theater and generally related to a movie)
- Most Humorous
- Best 3D Effect
- On the way to MOCA
- Most Colorful
- Most Inspirational
- Best Animation Mural
- Best Rendition of a Masterpiece
- Best Technique
- Best in Festival
We won! The majority of all the other artists chose Disneyland as The Most Colorful!
We made our way up to the stage filled with a giddy excitement.
Tom greeted us and told a funny story about how he'd seen us wandering around the festival, but didn't put 2 and 2 together, thinking that perhaps we were scientologists or something.
He gave me the microphone and I got to talk a little bit about our artwork.
The number one question we got I don't know how many times "Are you Disney cast members?"
And no, we're not actual plaid Disney cast members. We're just super fans who thought it would be fun to dress up like them.
The second question we got was "Is Disney paying your for this?" They're not, but I would be open to it... We are three time award winning artists now at the Pasadena Chalk Festival.
I was super happy someone caught the whole awards on video! Skip to 9:30 to see us.
Here's a link to view all the other winners.
In our awards we got a Los Angeles Zoo family membership, a $25 BJs pizza gift card, 2 tickets to the Pasadena History Museum, and a refreshing summer water bottle.
Congratulations Ruston on another great year! Now what are we going to do next year to top it...?
I've got a few more posts on the chalk festival coming up. A post about the silent auction and other showing a bunch more of the murals.
MOST COLORFUL...Congratulations, Joe & Ruston!...those rich, vibrant colors stood out BEAUTIFULLY!! Humorous story by Tom Coston as he introduced you and Ruston. A lot of people captured in the time lapse...Alli (very appropriately dressed w/ the mouse ears for her "Disneyland" visit) stayed really steady when removing the top tape portion closest to the other mural (good job!)...now you and Ruston have set the bar for others to start wearing costumes, too! Wonder what next year's festival holds!!! Hope Ian is feeling much better now (too bad he missed all the final artworks). On a side note, on that one closeup I noticed the "30th year" on your name tag...that was a special, celebratory year (on my visit that year I bought a decorative Disneyland 30th yr "The best has just begun" themed license plate, which hangs on my wall to the right of my pc!) Thanks for a wonderful recap from design inception, to trial implementation, and all the way to/through final creation...really fun to see things unfold! Congratulations, again! EOM
ReplyDeleteThanks! It was a really fun weekend. We met so many great people.
DeleteI wish Ian could have been up there too, but yeah he just wasn't feeling up for it. And thankfully he's better now.
I'm also wondering what next year is going to hold. How do you keep going bigger year after year? Well we've got quite a few months to figure it out.
That's fun for the 30th celebration. When I was picking out nametags from eBay I thought that one was pretty special. Cool that you have something from then close enough to see every day.