For Labor Day, I took to Fremont Park once more for Chalk It Up, an event in Sacramento where artists come together to do chalk art all around the park to help raise grant money for local teachers and schools. This was my fourteenth year doing this event!

As has become a tradition, I pulled inspiration for this year’s drawing from work I did earlier in 2025: a drawing from my June Toons project featuring a fish in a soda cup, yelling for help.

The drawing took about 4 hours to finish, which included a few breaks to stretch out and have lunch.

Chalk It Up has a number of food trucks available for lunch, and I ended up trying one called Hefty Gyros (because the line for the burger truck was too long). I’m glad I did, because it was super yummy!

It got pretty hot in the middle of the day when my square was briefly in the sun, but other than that it was a fantastic day to do art and I was happy to talk with people about my work and see family and friends there. As I’ve gotten better at making chalk art, I’ve had more fun participating in Chalk It Up, and I hope that trend continues next year!

One final thing that I thought was funny was that, while I was working, a family came in a few squares down and worked very quickly to get their art down: a picture of Pikachu. I was impressed with how fast they finished, and it looked good too. It was pretty funny to hear people walk by, look at my square, and say to their kids, “Oh, look at the fish!” then 2 seconds later, “Hey, Pikachu! Pika pika pika!” 😆