Sketch Pals

Once a month I get together with these wonderful ladies to sketch in San Diego's beautiful Balboa Park. From left to right is Kathy, Diane, Rachel and Sara. Since Sara is a fellow ukulele player I thought it would be fun to bring the chalkboard ukulele with me on this month's outing. Sara was quite upset that I was going to eraser her entry on the chalkboard ukulele. So, I decided to wait until she was gone to erase it.

Personally, I've found a somewhat perverse pleasure in saying, "Thanks for drawing on the ukulele, that was great!" and then erasing it right then and there. Diane, on the other hand, was totally with it and decided to draw some flowers on the uke for her artist trading card blog. Inspired by the Noah Scalin's skull-a-day blog she has decided to do an artist trading card everyday for a year! Check it out here http://atcaday.blogspot.com. And, if any of you are interested in sketching with us you can find out more at San Diego Sketch Crawlers over at Yahoo Groups. On a related note, Jane LaFazio, who started the SD Sketch Crawler group, recently asked my wife if if the chalkboard ukulele was playable or just a chalkboard. Well, it is playable. But, it's not all that in tune due to it's budget construction. More later!

Skullele

Here's the first image on the chalkboard ukulele. I've been a fan of Noah Scalin's Skull-a-day blog for quite some time. I've also been a long-time fan of skulls, too. So, as a tribute, my first drawing is a skull ukulele - a skullele. The skull was drawn with Prang Colored Paper Chalk. Before settling on the skull image I did a few test runs to see how the chalkboard paint handles the chalk. The Prang chalk is harder than the Crayola chalk but the colors are more vivid. The t-shirt I'm wearing is a stencil I designed. I used bleach in a spray bottle to lighten the black fabric. Thanks to the Mrs. for taking my portrait. If you haven't been to Noah's blog you can find it here http://skulladay.blogspot.com/