Amazing Chalk Artist: Charlie Smith

For our final meeting before we break for the summer, we invited WAS member Charlie Smith to present us with his chalk artist demonstration that he puts to music.

Charlie starts with a large framed paper that has a cloudy blue sky background. As the music plays, he uses various chalks to start creating a picture. You don't know what he's making at first, but then it begins to unfold. We saw that he was making a cliff on the right side with water below.

Another rocky cliff is on the left and there's a lighthouse at the very top of one of the cliffs. The whole time he's creating, music is playing, and some of the songs relate to lighthouses.

This is his final chalk drawing. We were very impressed with that and clapped accordingly. Little did we know, he wasn't done with us.

He then stepped back and started adjusting the light above the frame.

Suddenly, another chalk drawing revealed itself beneath the first one! After our exclamations of disbelief, he explained what he had done. Before he arrived at our meeting, he had created the other chalk drawing using glow-in-the-dark chalks. He showed us his collection, and in regular light, they all looked like pale yellows. Under a black light, they revealed their true colors. When he started his demonstration, we didn't know that this flourescent picture had been drawn first in the background.

You know, we have so many really talented artists in our group. We've seen many different kinds of artwork. But at this meeting, we found we could still be impressed by something new. Thank you, Charlie Smith, for this great demonstration of your talents. He really knows how to put on a show.