When Nora Ripple heard of a chalk festival her mother and law had helped organize, she felt that she should enter the chalk drawing contest. It was the first ever Ken Caryl chalk festival and contest and Nora didn’t have much experience with chalk drawing before. Despite the unknowns of the art, Nora had worked with pastels before, and since chalk was just pastels in a larger scale format, she thought she would be able to figure it out. For the contest, the theme for the chalk drawing was “What living in Ken Caryl means to you.” When thinking of ideas for her drawing, Nora was sure that she wanted to do a high contrast photo in or

der to make the drawing look more realistic. She ended up settling on a photo that she had taken when she was on a family walk. During Nora’s walk, she and her family had passed a field, only to stumble upon a recliner along with a sofa placed in the middle of the empty field, which as Nora said “was obviously dragged up there by teenagers.” The two irregular pieces of furniture happened to face the downtown Denver skyline, creating a cool shot. From Nora’s artistic perspective, the field held magnificent shadows along with texture due to the grass being backlit by the sun, and Nora decided to quickly sketch the image, and had her daughter help fill in some colors. When she began her chalk drawing, Nora says that she worked “big to small.” She used large amounts of color to fine details, and with blues and purples, she was able to capture the cold shadows of the image, along with the warm highlights by using yellows, oranges and reds. Nora said that she had a blast getting dirty and drawing with her daughter, but she especially loved talking to the neighbors that recognized the furniture in her drawing.  With her incredible chalk drawing, Nora won the People’s Choice Award in the festival for her art, along with a 25$ visa gift card!