Luna Park Sidewalk Chalk Festival, October 2009

We returned to the Luna Park neighborhood of San Jose for a second year, again as their feature square artists. Luna Park is traditionally an Italian neighborhood and currently has a strong Hispanic community, so in a nod to both cultures we chose futbol (soccer) as our topic. After a long search for the right photo, we got it: a photo of four kids playing soccer by Jared Tipton, a co-worker of Wayne's sister. It was perfect for our plan for a 3D image. We skewed the image so that when viewed from the bottom of the picture, the four kids would look like they were live. In the process of painting the image, we discovered that this painting could be interactive, too--we took photos of people pretending to kick or grab the ball from the kids.

We changed the kids' uniforms to match the uniforms for the Mexican and Italian national teams. We don't know the names of the four boys, so we called them Mateo, Marco, Juan and Lucio (left to right).

The pounced image, halfway through.

Cheryl starts work on Lucio's face. Wayne, obviously, is having a ball.

Closeup of Lucio's face.

Lucio's face completed.

Lucio now has a foot, so it's officially Foot Ball now.

Cheryl paints Lucio's knees.

Wayne paints Lucio's shorts, while in the background, Sharyn and Andrea work on their kitties.

Sometimes the easiest way to work is to sit on someone's lap. This is an interesting view because it shows just how far we had to stretch the kids to get them to look right.

Here's Wayne (and Lucio) from the more normal direction. Hard to believe Lucio stretches that far, isn't it?

Meanwhile, Cheryl has started on Mateo's face. She put down a underpainting of greens, then went over them with browns and reds to create a realistic skin tone.

The view from the top of the painting was interesting as well.

Cheryl paints Mateo's fist green while Wayne finishes Lucio.

Cheryl continues work on Mateo's fist while Lucio looks aslant.

The view from over Lucio's shoulder.

Closeup of Mateo's face with sunlight glancing across it.

Wayne lies down on the job.

Here's how he looks from the side.

It's not very nice to steal a kid's ball, Wayne!

All of a sudden, Wayne's a giant.

View from above Mateo's head.

Mateo's fists--or as Wayne puts it, Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Jessie from Trader Joe's tries to take the ball away from Lucio and Mateo.

Wayne plays goalkeeper.

This little girl is closer to the right scale, but she's still pretty big.

So far, Juan is all eyes.

Wayne paints Mateo's shirt. He's in scale with the kids there--just sort of floating in midair.

Mateo's head was about five feet tall. The entire picture was about 18 feet tall from the top of Juan's beehive hairdo to the bottom of the soccer ball.

The upside down view show's Juan's relationship to Marge Simpson.

Two of the Aztec dancers came over and tried to play with the ball.

Cheryl works on Marco's hair.

A former co-worker of Cheryls, Ron Vogel, visits while Cheryl works on Marco's face.

He's surrounded!

The finished painting.

The artists pose with the finished painting.

The view from the top.

The view from Mateo's side.

Our boys lead the parade of completed paintings.

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