Power Washer Sidewalk Art

If ever I wanted to point to evidence that the last eighteen months of concentrated sketchbook scribbling has changed my life, I would point to last week's summertime chore:  power washing the porch and sidewalks around my house.

There I stood, mindlessly shifting the power washing wand back and forth in even stripes to wash away the built up grime that comes with living in the woods when it hit me!  I didn't have to simply erase the grunge on my sidewalks.  I could draw in it!

This resembled an exercise I did once somewhere that starts by filling a blank piece of paper with an even layer of pencil or charcoal, then using your eraser to draw.

So first, just to see if I could control the 1700 psi power washer, I tried to draw a big owl.  And it worked!!!

I liked it enough to snag this photograph, but then, I washed it away and moved on to the next section of sidewalk.

There I tried to work out more of a scene, but making the subjects smaller made it much harder to control the power washer wand!  

I confess I've left this one on my sidewalk so that I can show it to a friend or two before I finish washing it away.

Would you ever have thought about using a power washer to make art?  I know it never would have occurred to me if I hadn't spend the last year and a half drawing all the time, in many situations, using tons of tools to make marks on different surfaces.

So this time I used a power washer as a "pen" and a concrete sidewalk as my "paper!"

Best of all, a kind of boring yard work task became an opportunity to make art, to renew a spirit of fun and share it with others, and to decorate my house (even if only for a few moments).

I wonder what other chores can become art-making opportunities?  (I probably shouldn't admit that I could draw pictures in the dust on my furniture, but it's true.... who has time to dust in the summer anyhow?)

Happy Scribbling to you!