From Billboards to Balloons: Charlie Markert's Sky High Art
A career as a billboard pictorial artist paved the way into the niche of hot air balloon painting.
Sign painting often precedes different and tangential career paths, but few have moved into a niche quite as narrow as Charlie Markert and his work on hot air balloons. In the video below he describes himself as "really unique in what I did", and it was his extensive experience as a billboard pictorial artist that paved the way.
The journey started while he was working for Naegele Outdoor in Minneapolis, and a request came in to have the Golden Grahams cereal packet painted on a hot air balloon. Charlie recalls exclaiming, "Oh my gosh, hot air balloons; that sounds interesting!", and the rest, as they say, is history, which Charlie recounts in this interview.
Charlie Markert Interview on YouTube.
Work-in-progress and the finished hot air balloon from Charlie Markert's first commission for Golden Grahams and Whittaker Balloons.
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