Achalk talk is an illustrated presentation in which the speaker draws pictures that emphasize lecture points and create a memorable experience for the listeners. Originally done with chalk on a blackboard, chalk talks can also use crayon, marker, or pastel on paper, or dry-erase markers on a whiteboard. Chalk talks differ from other types of illustrated talks in their use of real-time illustration rather than static images. Since their inception, chalk talks have been both a popular form of entertainment and a pedagogical tool.
One of the earliest chalk talk artists was a prohibition illustrator named Frank Beard (1842-1905).[1][2] Beard was a professional illustrator who published in The Ram's Horn, an interdenominational social gospel magazine.[3] Beard's wife was a Methodist, and when the women of their church asked Beard to draw some pictures as part of an evening of entertainment they were planning, the chalk talk was born.[4] In 1896, Beard published Chalk lessons; or, The black-board in the Sunday school which he dedicated to the Rev. Albert D. Vail "Through whose simple Black-board teaching I was first led to search the Scriptures and my own heart."[2]
Like magic lantern shows and lectures, chalk talks, with their presentation of images changing in real-time, could be educational as well as entertaining.[5] Chalk talks began to be used for religious rallies[6] and became popular acts in vaudeville and at Chautuaqua assemblies[7]. Some performers, such as James Stuart Blackton created acts around "lightning sketches," drawings which were rapidly modified as the audience looked on. "Tricks" or illustrative techniques used by performers were called "stunts."[8]
Winsor McCay began doing vaudeville chalk talks in 1906.[9] In his The Seven Ages of Man vaudeville act, he drew two infant faces, a boy and a girl, and progressively aged them.[10][11] Popular illustrator Vernon Grant was also known for his vaudeville circuit chalk talks. Cartoonist and magician Harlan Tarbell performed as a chalk-talker and published several chalk talk method books.[12] Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist John T. McCutcheon was a popular chalk talk performer,[8] and artist and suffragist Adele Goodman Clark set up her easel on a street corner to convince listeners to support woman suffrage.[13]
Chalk talks contributed to the development of early animated films, such as The Enchanted Drawing, by J. Stuart Blackton and his partner, Alfred E. Smith.[11] Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) was another early animation with its roots in chalk talks.[14] For his early films, Winsor McCay borrowed Blackton's image of the artist standing before drawings which come to life.[10]
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