Crayon Tutorial

On the insistence of a friend I'm attempting to create a step wise tutorial for my Crayon Painting process.

As with the creation of all works of Art I have a picture of what I want to draw in my mind. This phase in itself varies from person to person. Some people claim to have a clear image in their mind of what they are going to draw before they start. Others like me start of with an impression and add details as they find them during their process. 

I start with coating the paper with a thin layer of primer. This is a color which sets the hue of my painting. I usually peel a crayon and use it's side to apply this layer in soft broad strokes for economy of effort. 

I've discovered that crayons (especially oil pastels) hold well on paper and can be a pain to try to remove in case corrections are required. It is also much easier to add a dark color on top of a light color than the other way around. This usually manifests as a problem when I'm trying to add highlights on a object towards the completion of the painting.  I therefore prefer to think about the broad highlights I'm likely to need and apply a second layer of primer on my papers usually with white to block out the areas where I will need the highlights.

As can be seen here I had left a vague negatively painted outline of a tree. This is so because I want my tree to have a different base hue from the surrounding image so that it can pop out more acutely. I now fill in the primary hues I wish to use for the tree and also add yet another layer of primer where ever I see a need for it in the sky. These are the faint pink and stark purple shades I've added to the blue.

I then use my fingertips to blend in the hues in the tree as well as the sky. I usually reserve my index finger for touch up work and use the other fingers for specific shades where I can. Usually the middle finger for darks and the third for lights (My thumb and little finger don't smudge well :( but if yours work for you then even better!).

I now add in more coats of crayons to my drawing with the intent to make the tree more detailed. This includes the time I spend trying to make the bark more interesting. As a correction I am forced to add some blue between the main branches. I think I get away with it lightly in this painting because I had not coated my trunk too strongly and also because the coating was only a very light grey which takes the blue in an acceptable hue.





As you can see here this is the foundation of the eventual piece.


I believe it is important to keep visual interest for the viewer in mind whenever we draw. I needed something interesting in the painting now to hold the viewers attention. Just the one tree did not look promising as a subject for this painting. This is where I spied the profiles I exploited to add some emotion to this painting.

I use the darker hues now to give details to the canopy of the tree and a black 8B soft pencil to add shadows and character to the bark. I use a small pair of scissors as a scraping blade to highlight the profiles. I added an extra layer of light blue strokes to break the background with a faint horizon line to emphasize this depth.

I could not have known at the start of the painting that it would eventually turnout like this. However all the prep work I did to the paper still paid off because my tree pops nicely from the sky.

I hope this was useful. :)

This is my workstation and as you can see the beauty of crayon painting is the it needs practically no setup. :D