Back in March, some of my friends and I went to an event at a local nature center. We came across half a purple Crayola crayon on the ground out in the forest, and, knowing how much art supplies can cost, I picked it up and took it home.
I know the moon hates to see me coming
The intent was to make something that prominently featured my forest crayon, but what exactly eluded me for a while.
That's until a post came across my Tumblr dash with a link to this 1977 booklet on how to use Crayola crayons. It's full of techniques and project ideas, and makes you wonder why a version of it isn't included in the larger crayon boxes. Or on the Crayola website. Why is this information being kept from us? What else is Crayola hiding from us?
There is one technique I know that's missing from the booklet. I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid, so I need to share it with the world. That's how I'm using my purple crayon.
We start off with a regular drawing in crayon (I drew a Parasaurolophus).
I like dinosaurs, but I must admit my taste in them remains woefully normie
Then paint over it in watercolor.
Easy! Since wax is hydrophobic, the watercolor won't cover up the crayon. This way, you don't have to be precise around the edges of your drawing when coloring your background.
The effect is most dramatic with a white crayon, where the watercolor reveals the white drawing on white paper. This works well for secret messages or if you just enjoy the theatrics of it, but you'll have to keep shifting around to catch the right angles to see the crayon lines while you're drawing. From certain angles, the lines will be darker than the paper, and from others, lighter. Usually, none of these will be convenient, but it's not an impossible task.
A great way to amuse children and people on TikTok
Of course, not all crayons are made equally. Some don't repel water as well as others. I went ahead and tested how the crayons and oil pastels I have fare against watercolor. I'd heard that colored pencil also works this way, so I tried it with some Prismacolor pencils too.
Sorry, folks. "Thing, Japan" is true sometimes.
I should note that all of these sets are about 15 years old or older, so they might not be in optimal condition. That said, the winner here was the Pentel crayons, which I've had since preschool, as they're the standard in Japan. The Pentel website even lists this technique as a way to use their crayons! Take that, Crayola! I always knew Pentel was better!!
The Sakura crayon pastels did nearly as well at repelling water, but they have better coverage and are more pigmented. The colored pencil was not the best way to do this. Maybe there are waxier pencils that would work better.
Crayola did fine enough in the test, but I found that if you're drawing with lighter colors, you can only really go over them ONCE with watercolor before the paint starts to cover the crayon. Applying another layer of watercolor after it dries, like I did below, resulted in the drawing being hard to read in parts.
Crayon on small paper doesn't lend itself well to detail, hence my choice of a black-footed penguin instead of my beloved Magellanic penguin. Too bad you can't see its feet.
What seemed to work best was a wet-on-wet method of applying plain water to the paper first in the areas you want your paint. Then, while the paper is still wet, going in with watercolor. This helps the watercolor spread and keeps the paper from drying out while you're still working.
If you're reading this as someone who's totally new to watercolor, you can reduce buckling by stretching the paper first. There are a few ways to do this, but I opted to paint water onto the back of the paper and letting it dry before painting the front.
I've made a few more, another with the forest crayon and one with the Pentel crayons with a bit of Crayola mixed in.
Coming in hot with another normie dinosaur selection, Microraptor
I didn't really like how the Microraptor came out, which led me to drawing the Parasaurolophus on a larger sheet of paper.
I also didn't manage to get a good enough photo of it to show that the background doesn't totally fade out in the bottom, but I didn't care to retake it. My apologies to Microraptor.
And can I say? It's not easy to draw with a broken crayon. A full-size crayon is already designed for children, so half of a crayon is a literal pain for an adult to use, even with unusually small hands like my own. Spare yourself and find ways to extend your short crayons.
The tomatoes and basil came out alright.
I don't actually grow red tomatoes or Italian basil (at least, not this year), but they make for far more visually interesting subjects than the black tomatoes and black basil I am growing.
Speaking of which!
We're still a few weeks out from things being able to go outside, but the starters are doing pretty well. The Dark Stripe Micro tomatoes didn't sprout at all, but everything else had a near 100% germination rates. The white cherries in the seed snail are straggling behind a bit; I suspect this is in part because I used some leftover Miracle Grow potting mix in the pots, while the snail only got fresh potting soil without added fertilizer. It's still way more white cherry tomatoes than I'd expected to get from an old packet, so I'll have to force people to take some of them.
During all this, I did find time to finally watch the 2024 Harold and the Purple Crayon movie. I expected it to be a Katori Shingo-type adaptation where it doesn't take itself too seriously, but it has enough heart that you quickly get over its more unusual decisions. Instead, it was just perplexing. I'm not here to wax (heh) poetic on some imagined sanctity of Crockett Johnson's picture books, but literalizing Harold as a fictional character in a blank fictional realm and turning him into an adult so naive that he doesn't know about death seems counter to point of the book. Stories about a character from a fantasy world struggling in the "real world" can be great (who doesn't enjoy Elf [2003]?), but do kids really want to see pre-existing characters they were meant to relate to act so naive and incompetent? I have doubts.
One of the few good parts of the movie was Jemaine Clement playing the over-the-top villain, Gary (from the library). So my song for this post is the first Flight of the Conchords scene I encountered, Albi the Racist Dragon.
Another highlight was Tanya Reynolds as Porcupine. More movies should have a B-plot where a strange woman scuttles around and causes problems.
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