Crayon Portrait

A friend and I were talking a while back about how many Crayons we had when we were children. I told her that I recalled my friends always seem to have enormous boxes. Way more sharp pointed Crayons than I ever had. Maybe that was because I really used mine and they were peeled back and down to stubs.

At a book club luncheon recently, she brought me a present of an enormous box of 64 colors. I felt,as I looked at this childhood dream come true, that some fine art could be created from this childhood art supply that would be my thank you gift for her. After two failed attempts, I hit on an idea for a third try. Using clay board and an embossing heat blower I was sure this was going to be the magic solution. I lightly sketched an interesting bearded mans face onto the clay board and then started laying on the Crayon. When I had covered the entire board with wax color, it was time to see if the heat blower would do the magic I wanted it to do. Melt the wax just enough to blend and soak into and adhere to the board at the same time. Tentatively, I worked my way around the 6x6 inch surface and was pleasantly surprised with the result. There are some downsides to this technique though. The values are very hard to control because you can't keep layering crayon onto crayon. The other downside as I see it, is if the surface gets scratched it will remove the color and you will be down to layer one.
Would I do it again?....Don't think so, but it was fun.