From local kids to elite professionals flown in from Italy, the more than 200 artists at the Denver Chalk Art Festival (June 6 and 7 at 12th Avenue and Bannock Street in the Golden Triangle) see every humble slab of cement as a potential canvas. Ahead of the 24th annual exhibition, we asked Michael Rieger, the event’s artist director and co-founder, to share pointers for becoming a pavement Picasso.

Read More: A Denverite’s 3D Art Will Jump Off the Pavement at This Month’s Denver Chalk Art Festival

1. Driveways and sidewalks are often better than blacktop, since they tend to be smoother. Apartment-dwellers can find a patch of concrete at a city park or elementary school. “Or go to the hardware store, get a two-foot-by-three-foot board, paint it with chalkboard paint, and there’s your canvas,” Rieger suggests.

2. Any dye-based chalk will do, but good ol’ Crayola won’t stain clothing. (Pastel chalks last longer thanks to higher pigment contents, though they also might ruin your outfit.) The most common beginner mistake? Applying too much chalk, which can turn into a dusty mess. “Less is more,” Rieger urges.

3. If freehand sketching feels intimidating, use painter’s tape to create a stencil or geometric design—or buy a template from a craft store. Rieger once made a huge rhinoceros template for a job celebrating RTD’s rail expansion to RiNo. “By the end of the day,”he says, “we had 150 rhinos stampeding toward the train.”

4. Although you’ll find endless tutorials on social media, Rieger recommends 2011’s Sidewalk Canvas by Julie Kirk-Purcell. “It’s just really well-written,” he says, and includes a history of chalk art, which has roots in 16th-century Italy. Several master madonnari, or Italian street painters, will travel to Denver for this month’s fest.

5. Misting your completed artwork with hairspray may help it last longer in the sun and rain, but it’s not exactly eco-friendly. Plus, one of the gifts of chalk art is its ephemeral nature. “Chalk art is a performance-based medium,” Rieger says. “We’re working toward a finished piece, but really it’s the act of doing—it’s all temporary.”