Crayons, Not just for kids

I've been invited by my local Ward to show the young women how art can be used to add beauty to their homes.  I didn't want to break out the oil paints and give them a demonstration because of the smells of the chemicals and the mess.  Plus this is to be something simple that they can do easily.  So I decided that the best thing to do is to show them how tools that most people may have laying around the house can be used to make art.  I choose Construction Paper and Crayons.  I bought these below at my local grocery story.

Construction Paper and Crayons

I also decided that a demonstration finished piece should be make so they could see the potential of these simple items.  Now I've never really worked in this medium.  Well not since I was three or so.  I did some basic research last night on Google for a half an hour, to see how other artist had worked with crayons and to pick up some pointers.  Then today I when out and bought my supplies and got to work.

8 x 10 Crayola Crayon on Paper

I had a lot of fun.  I felt like I was a kid again.  I used a picture I had on my computer of a still life, as reference.  I didn't use anything except the Crayola Crayons and a pencil to rough in the objects.  It is amazing to me how many of the principle I use in oil painting applied straight across to this drawing.  One of the things I learned early on is that you can easily go dark, but going light was very difficult if not impossible once the heavy darker colors were put in.  I could use white to lighten up hews a little bit on the stronger colors. 

I'm looking forward to doing this again tomorrow with the young women.  I think for the young woman I'll bring a flower in a glass bottle for them to look at and draw.  I'll try and take picture of their art and post them tomorrow. 

The all important Painting Surfaces

Canvas. For me canvas is a general term I use to discribe just about any painting surface I use to paint on. In reality only part of the time do I use canvas or to be more exact cotton canvas. Let see I have used stretched cotton canvas (either pre-stretched or stretched by me). To stretch canvas you wrap it around stretcher bars which typically are made of wood.
In recent years a newer type of canvas has come out on the market. It goes by several different names like, gallery wrap, studio wrap, museum edge and creative edge, just to name a few. But they are all basically the same thing.
The canvas is stretched from the front clear around the sides and fastened in the back. Thus leaving the front and sides to be painted on. Plus these types of canvases tend to be deeper thus giving the artist more room to paint. I've seen them go as deep as six inches, looking more like a box then a panel. Plus because the sides are painted there is no need to frame these paintings. Thus saving money on not framing.
Another type of option is canvas board. Where canvas is adhered to a board.

There are many different cloths you can paint on after they have been primed with gesso. The two I prefer are cotton or linen, with linen being my favorite. I like the interesting and unique variety of textures linen creates with out being too rough. Now my mentor Greg Olsen is a bit more brave then I am. He has painted on all sorts of surfaces, from silk, to polyester, plaster (which he carved first to make it a relief carving then painted it), wood panels and hardboard (both having done paintings on the smooth side and rough side). Also to add more tooth (texture) to the painting surface you can add some marble dust to your gesso. A small amount is like 200 grit sand paper and a large amount it like 20 grit (Greg has also add so much marble dust to one of his paintings that the gesso was like very think paste. So he sculpted it into trees and rocks for a relief like sculpture and then painted it too). I like a very smooth surface, so needless to say these approaches to surface texture do not appeal to me.