The Challenge for July is Vanishing Point. As always with our challenges, the interpretation is entirely up to you.

Our topic jar for future Challenges is getting a little low. Please help out by sending topic ideas, suggestions, directions, preferences to cagac.ca@gmail.com

Here’s a special intro for this month’s challenge. Member Robin Patterson creates art and teaches out of The Crayon Box Studio! With a name like that we knew she’d have some insight on our topic.

By Robin Patterson This sculpture is a work in process. All my students are invited to add a crayon with their first name, last initial, and the year written on it. The crayons are hot glued together.

Sadly, many, many kids don’t have crayons anymore. So, if they want to participate, I let them choose from mine–I have thousands, lolol. We started this right after covid hit, so it’s very small so far.

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Colouring is extremely relaxing. I hand draw my pictures very lightly in pencil before putting in the many, many layers of colour. Almost every spot on every picture has at least three different colours, and some areas even more. I test layers on a separate page before committing. Some colours don’t mix well with others. For instance, there is a certain shade of blue that insists on resisting all other layers. I have no idea why, but the consistency of it is more waxy than other colours.

I also use a knife to scratch out areas, and tape to lift crumbs from the surface. Another hint is that I never sharpen crayons, but instead roll them as I use them to keep a bit of a point…just as you do in pencil or colour pencil to not waste the pigments.

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I wanted to include my student Diane’s work because it’s easier to illustrate how these are done. The student came to me to learn acrylic but upon seeing the crayon work she was intrigued and started with crayons the next week.

The cattail was her first project to get better acquainted with how to use crayons more precisely. On these, she was not comfortable with drawing so we used her photos, blew them up, and used a graphite transfer sheet to trace them onto Canson Mixed Media paper. The cattail picture did NOT have the moon in it. We just added that for drama. 😉

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What I want to stress is that the techniques are easily learned. Below is my work “HenryTest” as I showed Diane how to make the eyes or the name on the tag shine, or some whiskers stay white (a form of embossing), or rendering a soft silky ear.

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Diane finished “Henry” last week by herself (I have been closed during this latest Ontario lockdown).

By Susan Irving Today instead of doing more of the  wretched weeding in the garden, I decided to take a day off and sit out there with my Crayola crayons, see if I could do anything for the crayon challenge, and just play a bit.

I began by starting a simple crayon drawing of my garden Buddha and it seems my inner hippie came out. 

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By Diane Faubert We went to Playa Flamingo Costa Rica in Feb. 2020 and I drew these with wax crayons and colouring pencils. This is what I would see from our balcony. I had fun drawing with my grandson. 

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By Kerry Herwynen McIntosh Well, here we are.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I thought up this challenge but, this wasn’t it. 

 I looked at different ways of using crayon and decided on crayon batik.  I enjoyed batik in the past. I like the preciseness of applying beeswax, the repeated dying and the slow revelation of the design.

Melted crayon on fabric is NOT like batik.  The paraffin behaves very differently than beeswax.  It’s more difficult to get good coverage.  You would need a LOT more crayons to fill large areas. I do like the intensity of the colour though.  It’s instant. But very hard to remove the paraffin!

This is “Moon Man”. Melted crayon on cotton sheeting.About 10″ square. He will become a shopping bag!

I will not do this again🤣

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By Tina Whitman So, crayons: took a long time to figure out what to do and how to do it. 

Visiting Glengarry Market on Main Street near Hwy 43, I took a photo of some beautiful hollyhocks. Subject done, now how to do this?

I used my grandmother’s tart tins to melt the different coloured crayons in my Mom’s ancient electric fry pan. Worked perfectly.

I used a pallet knife to apply the hollyhocks on a cradle board. I had already painted a wood fence for the background with acrylic paint. I enjoyed using the mini torch.

Tip, soaking the crayons in warm water help to make the paper sleeves easier to remove.

I would try another wax creation but I would do it when I can have my windows open. I found the wax melting was a little stinky.

Well, again it was a challenge but I did enjoy it once I knew what I was doing.