Hello Soul Sisters
The past week I have been playing with the Marabu Art Crayons. I put them through some of their paces but I know there is a bit more to explore with this medium. They are available in the
shop. You can purchase them in sets of four or individually.
The first thing I did was create a colour chart so that I know exactly what the colours look like.
The colours are rich and they are oh so creamy, as soft as butter, but only the kind of butter than has been sitting on your bench for a while to soften. The colour just glided across the paper surface, the paper I used was a watercolour paper.
To put these crayons through their paces I cut up some watercolour paper and then applied gesso to the surface with my palette knife. Because I mainly use a surface with gesso I needed to see how they perform. This is a long post so I do hope that you stick with me for it all.
In the first test I add three of the colours straight to the surface.
I then added water to see how much the crayons would move, I think I added too much water, although I did still need to move some of it with my finger. Love the look that was create, a soft watery look.
Once dried I then wiped the surface with a baby wipe and found that I could wipe a lot of the colour away.
For this experiment, test or what ever you want to call it I add water to my paper first, then using two colour crayons I drew on the paper. I then moved the colour with my fingers. Doing it this was produced a more intense colour and the texture of where I applied the gesso showed through.
The colour is more vibrant with doing it this way than the one above.
For this one I wanted to see how it would go being added to a gel medium and put through a stencil. When I was cutting some of the crayon I found that my craft knife (that had only just been replaced) met with some resistance. This surprised me considering how smooth and creamy they are. The piece that I had cut off was not as easy to mixed with my medium, took a little bit of work but I have to say it was well worth the effort. I used a gloss medium which looks great but I think I need to buy it in matte.
I really put these crayons through their paces. With this set of photos I use the crayon three different ways through the stencil.
This photo is where I applied some of the crayon to my craft mat and picked it up with a make up sponge and then applied it through the stencil. For just the little bit I did complete I needed to add more crayon to my craft mat. The look is very soft but I really like how it turned out.
This photo looks like I have a blank piece of paper in from of you but it's not quite. I did exactly as above but instead of using a dry makeup sponge I added some water, thinking that it would spread a little easier. When in fact the crayon disappear almost completely.
This photo I laid my stencil down on the paper first, then drew in the individual circles. I then put some water on my finger and moved the crayon. I did this because I though it would be easier to move the colour. Yes it was but it is a bit of a mess. I didn't put a heap of water on my finger but I guess it was still too much. It was not the look I wanted to achieve but that's ok.
This next experiment surprised me a lot with the result. I thought that because the crayons were water reactive I would make a couple of sprays. So I made the sprays, and the results was not what I thought it would be.
The photo below shows just how much crayon I put in a test tube spray bottle. The piece of crayon was not huge but then again neither was the spray bottle.
I made the spray at 5pm on Saturday. I added the water first then put the crayon in, gave it a shake and as you can see not much happened. So I thought I would leave it to dissolve.
After another shake, this photo was taken at 9pm Saturday night, more colour than when I first did it 4 hours before but the crayon pieces did not dissolve.
Monday at 12 pm, 43 hours after I made the spray, the colour has not changed much and it is still not dissolved.
I wanted to put this post together for you so I decided to use the spray to see what result I achieved. I put texture paste through my stencil, dried it with a heat gun and then spray the two sprays. I used all of both sprays and the colour really is very pale, not what I expected.
Close up of the dried sprays.
If you are wondering yes I did refill the spray bottles, as I am really interested to see if the crayons actually dissolve.
Well if you made it this far I thank you. The crayons do have their positives but they also have their negatives. Will I be using them yes I will.
The two stencils I used are available in the shop please follow the links below
