Playing With Crayons

Maybe it's the starving artist in me...(I was a little hungry when I went to bed last night..lol) but I woke up this morning with this crazy idea to color something with crayons...

I thought for sure my daughter would have some decent 64 pack of crayola crayons (you know the kind, with the fancy dancy sharpener in the back?) but all I found was this cheap 24 pack of dollar store crayons....was I really that cheap?... what kind of mother am I? I console myself with the fact that Tweety was never into coloring. But what kind of kid would be with a lousy 24 pack of dollar store crayons? Ok can someone please turn the guilt button off? I'm trying to tell a story! ..anyway this is what I found so this is what i had to play with.

I am using blending tortilions, a mini plastic container with a few squares of felt in the bottom soaked with baby oil, crayons and a LOTV image.

Just a close up of the felt squares. You see that they're not swimming in oil but they are evenly dampened.

Here we have the finished image...

And a close up of it so you can see all the imperfections....

Not bad!

The most difficult thing working with crayons is that they are very waxy. So when you layer colors you run the risk of peeling off the last layer you put down. This happened to me but I kept reapplying. Crayons also flake a bit so any stray bits have a way of getting stuck on the paper. Sometimes you can scrape these up with something sharp like a paper piercer or xacto knife. Other times you have to ignore it. :-)

We had a friend in London who was an amazing artist (probably still is) and he stunned me one time by showing us a "painting" he did solely with childrens crayons. It was a Monet replica and was jawdropping amazing. I guess, since then I have set that as a challenge in front of me. He always said that it wasn't so much the product as the technique. That you could use just about anything to create really good art.

I didn't believe him.

But this little project has inspired me enough to buy that big pack of crayolas. I am told they come in 120 colors now .

UPDATE:

Yes, I had to do it. I went to the drug store and picked up a 120 pack of Crayola Crayons! :-) I am happy to report that these work even better than the generic in that they are less waxy and so let you put down more color layers without peeling up the layer underneath. I will try to use my new practice crayola image in my next card so you can see the possibilities.

btw, crayons are not as cheap as they used to be.

It cost me $10.99 for that 120 pack. *gasp* splutter* But then if you think how expensive professional oil crayons/pencils etc are then its a steal. If any of you decide to raid your kids crayon boxes and try the technique I would love to see how what you come up with! (oh, this time I used a product called Goo Gone as my solvent. Works pretty good but does squeak on the paper which is a bit annoying.