Other Art 4: Melted Crayon Art

1: Blue and Yellow

04/24/2014

Size: 8in x 12in

Melted Crayon (Crayola) on canvas

Colors: Blue, Yellow, Black, White

2: Placid Water

04/24/2014

Size: 8in x 12in

Melted Crayon (Crayola) on canvas

Colors: Blue Green, Black, White

3: Storm

04/24/2014

Size: 8in x 12in

Melted Crayon (Crayola) on canvas

Colors: Blue Violet, Black, White

4: Ocean

04/24/2014

Size: 8in x 12in

Melted Crayon (Crayola) on canvas

Colors: Blue, Blue Green, Blue Violet, Black, White

These were my first attempts (in order) at melted crayon art. Melted crayon art is super easy and fun to do, but it does make a mess (well only if you do it how I did :D - I still am speckled with blue and yellow crayon). It's also really quick; I made all of these in one evening. All you need are some old crayons, and canvas, and a hair dryer. There are tons of demos on youtube of how to do a rainbow melted crayon art or you can just go freestyle like I did.

Blue and Yellow: The concept for this one was that my favorite combination of two colors is blue and yellow because they are really vibrant and I really like their contrast (think blue and yellow Macaw [it is also one of my life goals to do a series of paintings only using blue and yellow]). This piece took me the longest because I did not know what I was doing at all, and it is also the piece I am least happy with. My main problem was that I kept getting a big glob of icky greenish color in the middle of the piece since the melted crayons did not mix into a nice vibrant green like paints do. I ended up scraping most of it off and redoing it until it got to a point where it was okay. I wish there was a little bit more interaction between the yellow and blue sides of the painting. In retrospect I should have tried to also use the green crayon to get the ideal green color in the middle.

Placid Water: For this piece I took a blue green crayon and melted it until it covered the entire canvas (not smoothly but in blotches similar to the final). Then I went in and melted a little bit of white in the top right corner and some black in the bottom left corner. The concept for this piece was that the blue green color looked really pretty and I was still recovering from my first piece so I only wanted to use one main color since blending the yellow and blue was so difficult. I decided then to due a turquoise piece with dramatic black shadows and white highlights. As I started making the piece however, it looked a lot like water so I changed my initial concept and went for more subtle uses of black and white. My main problem with this one was that I ended up with a huge blob of black in the bottom left corner where I wanted dark turquoise mixed with black. So I went back in to try to add more blue on top of the black and it just turned into a mess. Eventually I finagled it enough to where I was happy with it.

Storm: My concept for this one was to due the same thing I did with Placid Water except for with blue violet and using more white than black. However it turned out quite differently which was a pleasant surprise, and it actually looks like rainclouds. Technique-wise I started by melting the black in the corner. Next I melted the purple in the middle and fading into the black, and lastly the white in the upper corner. Some of the white spattered down into the black which at first I wasn't too happy about but now I think is really cool because it looks like it's raining. This one took me the shortest amount of time and I am generally happy with it.

Ocean: The concept for this one was actually a bag that I have that has a castle surrounded by a deep purple fading to turquoise sky. Well, it was supposed to be a sky until the white at the top gave it the perfect ocean wave effect that I wish I could replicate with acrylics. Anyways I did this one much the same as Storm only with more colors. First I did the white corner, then turquoise, blue, purple, black. Afterwards I went back to add more white at the top and more blue to blend the colors a little bit better.

Overall I had a ton of fun. This was especially fun because I have recently been thinking about experimenting with a couple abstract designs with acrylics, so this gave me a lot of ideas. :D