Crayon Melt Painting + Tutorial Video

 

SO. MUCH. FUN.

seriously, this is one of the most fun techniques I've ever tried. sure, it's not 'fine' art, but it's still awesome.

 

Materials Used:

Crayola Crayons

Hair Dryer

Exacto Knife

Blue Painter's Tape

Easel

Plastic Bags

Glue Gun

What I Learned:

-how to manipulate melted wax

-Friendship really IS Magic.

A couple of exercises

here's a few exercises I've tried recently for fun and practice. didn't follow any guide, I was just bored and so made up games for myself.

Character building from a simple starter shape, seen top-center. all 3 characters were made with that starter shape. very fun and challenging.  how many different characters can you make?

without having a reference, I tried to draw as many different types of cups as I could think of. also attempted to keep them all in perspective, which is definatly something I need to work on. very fun exercise, I plan on doing more with different subjects in the future.

I had my sister pose briefly (20 seconds) and then drew an amorphous character pose study with roughly the proportions of my character Arty, which I then turned into a value study. not entirely happy with the anatomy or values of the facial planes, but I do plan on pursuing variations on this pose for an Arty painting.

Sketches

some watercolor sketches I've done over the past month.

a random Giraffe scribbled while waiting for a show that I was working to start.

when my friend, Austin, saw the giraffe, he really wanted me to color it in many different colors, but since I had already done most of the coloring, I promised I'd draw him a special multi-colored giraffe just for him. :)

a random bottle that was on a random table in a random establishment I randomly happened to be at.

cloud shape exercise, just for fun. ignore the boring green blob at the bottom.

Pretty tree! total accident.

I was practicing mixing different browns with my watercolor set, and since I had the colors mixed I decided

to sketch something with them. this is what came of that.

the leaves were so much fun. what I did was drop tiny droplettes of paint, then tap on them with my finger. it gave a beautifully random, soft effect.

another tree. before I discovered the trick to soft-looking leaves. I think trees are my favorite thing to sketch with watercolors.

the original of this is tiny. tiny tiny. less then 1in x 1in. but I liked it, and wanted to preserve it, so here it is. :)

Materials used:

Cheap sketchbook

Niji Waterbrush

Small round brush

Watercolor pencils

Watercolor travel kit (small square dry watercolors)

What I Learned:

-more control with my paints and brushes.

-how to give the impression of leaves without taking away from the tree.

-more about cloud shapes

-how to mix organic browns with primary colors.

-a lot about mixing colors.

Art Block

for the past week I've felt like I'm backsliding into Art Block again.

what is your favorite way to work out an art block?

I think I may try playing with some crayons later, maybe the colors and carefree nature of the crayon can loosen me up.