All right. New year off to a good start. I'm still working in watercolor, pencils and so forth, but this time I have something different. I like to experiment, see what I can do with certain media, and I had been experimenting with crayons.
CRAYONS???
No. I'm not crazy. I love the texture, and colors, although the black is a little weak, I sort of get around that by adding purple/violet & brick red.
Anyway, I wanted to share with you all how I go about this. And before you ask if I'm crazy, the answer is "probably."
So, let me get on with this.
Here you see that I've got my crayons all lined up (by color), and I have a painting I did in watercolors I did about 2 years ago to work from. (Yes, you see I am serious about using crayons!)
Above I work in the colors, and below is finished
painting.
Now for the amazing part.
Yes. Paint Thinner. I do use the odorless kind.
I don't know how many You Tube videos I went to to see if anyone had some different way of blending crayons, which are, of course, wax.
No one that I saw (and I went through dozens of boring videos, some of which I didn't even stay for more than a minute to endure their yammerings). None had suggested using paint thinner. I don't know why. There were some who melted crayons in a glue gun. That's not what I was after. After figuring out that if OMS (odorless mineral sprits), could blend wax-based colored pencils, then why not crayons?
Above and below, you can see where I've blended the crayons. In
photo below you can really see it in the blue area to left.
And here is the finished painting. the only way anyone can figure out what medium I used is maybe to feel it, or to sniff. One person thought I had used soft pastels. Haha. Fooled him!
If you wish to join me on facebook at
Or