Crayon Art

Here's the thing.
I can't draw.
At all.
In fact, my 6 year old son can draw better stick people than I can. No, I'm not kidding, believe me, I wish I was.
So when it comes to expressing myself via art work, I've been greatly lacking in ways to do so that made me happy. I would try to draw, or paint or whatever, and would get insanely frustrated when things didn't end up looking anything like what they looked like in my mind, so I stopped trying those types of things. I stopped trying to make things look like things. I embraced the abstract.
So when I first saw a melted crayon art piece, I was thrilled! That kind of thing was perfect for me!
I did a bit of googling, and found out that it was a really easy thing to do, and so set out to get the supplies I would need to create my own.



I got a glue gun, some canvas' and a whole bunch of crayons from the dollar store and set to work.
My first one I made was a typical piece, and I love it.

I guess I should tell you now that I have a mild to moderate case of OCPD, and so when it comes to organizing things and what not, I get a little...anal...about it. My son and I sat down and sorted out the crayons into colours, because I was using 4 packs, and just "had" to have all the same colours together. The first one I made was made up of the warm colours, and I really do love how it turned out.

Then, about a week, maybe a little longer, later, I wanted to make another one, using the cool colours from the same packs. 

I decided to ignore the part of me that was screaming to put all the same colours together and instead tossed all the blue, purple, black, grey and white crayons in a container and just reached in blindly and glued them to the canvas in whatever order they came out. Looking at them all glued on when I was done, I was unsure of how this one would turn out. 

Would I love it as much as I had the last one? I had no idea, but I turned on the blow drier and got to work. 

Right away I could tell that this one wasn't going to turn out anything like the last. Because the colours were so intermixed, there wasn't enough of any one colour at one point to create the strong blocks of colour that the first one had had. Instead, right away I noticed that the colours were melding together, becoming muddled and mixing up and not going at all how I wanted them to go. It was ruined!!! This is what came from ignoring that part of me that likes order and organization and balance and all that!!!!

Or so I thought. 

Because I was mad at it for not working out, I decided to just let all the crayons melt however they wanted, I mean, it was already ruined, right?

But as I melted them, I noticed that I could control where the wax went if I moved the blow dryer around and actually pointed it right on the melted wax instead of just the crayons. And if I laid the canvas down flat, as opposed to having it tilted to let the wax run down, it would pool together, and I could then move even more wax around.

I sat there and fiddled with it, angling the canvas this way and that, laying it flat, doing whatever I felt like, and it came out amazing.

I was thrilled at how it came out, at the fact that it looked like some crazy storm or something, and just sat and stared at it for a while, unable to believe that I had made this, and that it had come about from something that I had given up as a loss. 

I loved it so much that I wanted to share it with people. My step father's birthday was coming up a few days later, and because he is so very hard to shop for, I didn't have a gift for him yet. I decided to give it to him, and it is now up at my parent's house, so any time someone goes over to their house, they will see it.

I tried making another one, this time without gluing the crayons to the canvas, and it was on a much smaller canvas as well. I mean, I had to see if the awesomeness was just a fluke, or if it was something I could actually do on purpose, right? 

I was pleased to see that, yes, I could make the same type of effect on purpose, and that without being confined to the limits of where the crayons were glued on, the piece could become something much different. This one is now in a frame and sitting on the ledge of my living room.

So there you have it. These are the three crayon art pieces I have made so far. 

And when I say so far, I mean, I have many more that I will be making...or that will be using me to be made...because really, these came to life on their own, I just supplied the heat for them to blossom. 

I actually just went to the store yesterday and got 4 more canvas', two large ones like the first two, and two small ones like the last, as well as a bunch of crayons. So you can expect to see more here soon I'd say.