sidewalk artist

noun

1. an artist who draws pictures on the sidewalk, especially with colored chalk, as a means of soliciting money from passers-by.
2. an artist working in the streets, who draws portraits of passing individuals who sit for quick sketches executed in charcoal or pastel.

Example Sentences

As I strolled last month along the famous boulevard, La Canebiere, I noticed gypsies and Middle Eastern immigrants, a bride and groom, in full wedding regalia, waiting for a bus, a sidewalk artist who had sculpted a lifelike dog out of sand and a tired busker playing the accordion, into whose bowl I dropped two euros.

From Washington Post

That, combined with his exaggerated features—out-there chin, puffy cheeks—make him look like a caricature by a sidewalk artist.

From BusinessWeek

We first meet Tintin sitting for a portrait by a jovial sidewalk artist, who then holds up his work.

From Time

Actually, Paul Robeson, at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theater, is neither a photograph nor a painting, but more like a sidewalk artist's quick sketch that captures a credible likeness without achieving the dimensions of art.

From Time Magazine Archive

In this waif of our gutters and ward of our sidewalk artist inhered a spirit of the most punctilious and rigid honor, the gift, perhaps, of some forgotten ancestry.

From Project Gutenberg