Pasadena Chalk Festival - The Night Before the Event - 2022/06/17

It's Friday Night and the Pasadena Chalk Festival is almost here! My family is still at the Orangeland RV Resort down in Anaheim, but Ruston and I have an early start tomorrow morning. Instead of driving tomorrow morning, Ruston offered me his guest bedroom for the night. Perfect! 

When I arrived at 9:30pm, Ruston and I were both ready to get started. I don't know who suggested it, but somehow we agreed to drive over to the Paseo to get going! 

Here's our spot! We asked for this location a year ago! 

Before got started, we took a walk around to see if anyone else had the same idea. And sure enough, there's people who have already started! Hey, I know that guy! It's John Vaughn! He was one of the artists who helped us out when we were brand new here and having some difficulties! He's been overseas for a few years, but now he's back in the States and participating in the chalk festival again! 

I swept off the cement of debris as best I could. 

Then Ruston got started by putting down our base coat of white. This usually takes up a lot of our morning, while we put down a layer of white tempera. 

In the past we used those hobby sponge brushes, but after seeing others use paint rollers, we have been doing that from then on! 

While Ruston is busy spreading tempera, I'm busy taping off our circle We've got the hard edge of the pavement to guide us, but it'll be cleaner lines if we have tape protecting the edges. 

That's a lot of area to cover. We went through a bit more of our bottle of tempera than we were expecting. I hope there's enough left over for tomorrow!

There were a few interesting characters walking around Pasadena late on a Friday night. Obviously drunk. One guy just thought everything we did was awesome. The art, the artists. All amazing. Incredible. 

Another had an amusing exchange with Ruston. Note the planter behind the blue umbrella. 

Drunk Guy - Hey, do you mind if I take a p!ss here? 

Ruston - At the planter? There's a bathroom around the corner. 

Drunk Guy - Yeah. I guess. I just want to go right here. 

Ruston - Oh. Well why don't you go to that planter over there (a little further away from us). 

Drunk Guy - Oh yeah, okay. I figured I'd ask since you guys care about this place. 

It didn't take us too long to get the first layer down. Tomorrow we'll work on a second coat, likely just in the center where the white will show through, but I'm happy we got an early start. 

So... what with all the local shenanigans going on, how best to protect our mural overnight? Normally we'd cover it in plastic, but we didn't bring those tonight. There are a few of these signs up in the area though...

We collected any random signs we saw in the area and cordoned off our circle. It'll have to do. 

11pm and we're all set! We'll be back tomorrow morning, bright and early!