Sunny days

God I love those sunny summer days! Today there was an Italian Street Painting Festival in San Rafael. My friend James was going to be there since his wife was going to be working on a painting with people from work. Without anything better to do, I decided it would be good to get out especially if there is art involved.

I woke up a little later than I had anticipated and after considering skipping the gym, decided to go, if only for the fact that I'd have to pay a $2 toll anyway, so I might as well go to the gym. I'd stopped going for the two weeks it took me to pack and move all of my worldly possessions. Of course carrying boxes up and down stairs provided me with a pretty good workout. In any case I'm glad to be back and to have that little bit of structure in my life.

After I finished my workout, I took the top off of my convertible and somehow managed to choose the worst possible route to the Golden Gate Bridge. Even after 4 years in the area, I still don't have more than the basic paths in my head to get from point A to point B. Perhaps this is something that will soon change?

In any case, the weather was beautiful and I slowly made my way to the Street Painting singing along to the radio. Singing in a convertible is different in that people can actually *hear* you singing. But I was up for the challenge or just didn't care.

I found parking and walked to the festival. At first I was awed by the drawing and artistic skills of the artists to translate a small idea onto a huge piece of asphalt. Upon closer examination, I saw them use grids as well as stencils of all sorts to lay the basic drawings down. How cool! Whenever I see other artists using these sorts of tricks (or perhaps techniques would be a better word) I feel better about the ones I use when I paint.

I never thought about pastels as a medium I'd want to use, too messy and too much dust, but I wanted to be a pastel artist today. Many were just okay. But some were just too awesome for words (although that doesn't seem to stop me from trying to find some words). They even had small squares for kids to do their own and sold a square with a box of pastels and a blending eraser for $10.

I love it when kids are inspired and then empowered to show their creativity. This is so frequently discouraged in order for us to learn more valuable skills, like memorizing facts and mastering logical information. Okay, so that's not entirely fair, but creative expression doesn't always get it's fair share of time in our lives. If you are sitting there disagreeing with me, then tell me how many times today you were able to express yourself in a creative manner. I did for once remember to bring a camera with me. Actually I had two, but chose to use my Lomo camera exclusively. It seemed like the right choice for the day.