He might be the only New Yorker who welcomes people to graffiti his car. Artist Philip Romano, 20, covered his 2004 Hyundai Elantra in a chalkboard coating and invites strangers to draw on the ride.

Chalk is fun to draw with, and some people even get really good at using it to make art on the sidewalk. If you don’t like tediously developing such skills, though, you could go another route.

I became fixated with chalkboards at an early age, when a neighbor gave me a chalkboard easel her children had outgrown. With that dusty board, all I had to do was add a swirl of imagination and my ...