Introduction: Cubist Face With Crushed Crayon

About: Hi! My name in Miranda Sarmiento. I am an architect and I really like art and creativity.

In this instructable we will make a painting of a cubist face using the crushed crayon technique.

To make this painting you must draw a sketch, prepare the crayons and paste the crushed crayon in the way that I will explain in this tutorial to make it perfect.

Let's grab some materials and make a crushed crayon painting!

Supplies

Materials

To make this cubist painting you need crayons of many colors, specifically in this tutorial we will use the following:

  • purple crayons
  • red wine colored crayons
  • black crayons
  • red crayons
  • orange crayons
  • yellow crayons
  • light green crayons
  • dark green crayons
  • light blue crayons
  • curuba colored crayons
  • pink crayons

Tools

The required tools are:

  • A canvas (I used a 18" x 24" canvas)
  • Scalpel
  • Pencil sharpener
  • Glue
  • Pencil

Step 1: Draw the Sketch

Before you start adding the crushed crayon, you should draw the sketch that you like best. You don't need to be an artist, just find a reference image and draw guide lines.

An advantage of this technique is that it looks great with simple drawings, that is why I chose a cubist style for my painting, here is a link with many more similar examples: https://co.pinterest.com/pin/914862410685465/

When you have chosen your reference, draw it with a pencil on the canvas.

Step 2: Scrape and Grind Crayons

This is the most fun part of this instructable.

In a small cardboard cup (I used a 6oz) you must cut and scrape the crayons, for this you can use the pencil cutter and the scalpel.

After chopping and scraping the crayons you must grind them until they are almost powdered.


For my painting I used the following amounts of crayon:

  • Yellow crayon: 1.5''
  • Orange crayon: 1.5''
  • Red crayon: 0.5''
  • Pink crayon: 0.5''
  • Curuba crayon: 1''
  • Light green crayon: 2''
  • Dark green crayon: 1''
  • Light blue crayon: 1.5''
  • Purple crayon: 2''
  • Black crayon: 1.5''
  • Red wine crayon: 1''

Step 3: Add Crayon

To add the crayon to the painting, I recommend you do it in the following way in order to facilitate its realization and preserve the cleanliness of the colors as much as possible.

  1. Add the crayon for the outlines.
  2. Add the crayon to the dark color areas.
  3. Add the crayon to the light colored areas.

Step 4: Add Crayon - Face Contours

With the glue, outline the contour of the face, the eye and the eyebrow.

Then, on top of the glue, add the crushed black crayon.

Finally, to remove the excess crayon, carefully place the canvas vertically and gently tap on the back. You can put this leftover crayon back into the cup to use in the next steps.

Step 5: Add Crayon - Dark Color Areas

To fill in the different areas of the table we must do and repeat three simple steps:

  1. Add glue to a small section of the area of the color you are filling in, to prevent the glue from drying out.
  2. Add the crushed crayon of the corresponding color on top of the glue.
  3. Remove the excess crayon (placing the canvas vertically).

For my painting, I filled the hair with purple and red wine crayon.

Step 6: Add Crayon - Light Color Areas

To fill in the light colored areas of the painting, follow the same steps that I mentioned in step 5 of this tutorial.

At this point, I filled the mouth with pink crayon. Then, with red, orange and curuba crayons, I filled in the left part of the face. Then I continued making the eye with blue crayon, and the neck with dark green, light green and yellow crayon. Finally, for the right part of the face, I used orange and yellow crayon for the forehead and light green, light blue crayon and a detail in curuba crayon for the cheek.

Step 7: Lacquer (optional)

If you want to fix the crushed crayon more to prevent it from peeling off over time, you can lay down a base of lacquer, this will set everything in place.

Step 8: Painting Completed

Our beautiful cubist style painting is complete!


I hope you've enjoyed this look at making a crushed crayon painting, and that you'll try making one yourself!

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