Coloring with crayons is just as simple as buying a pack of crayons and a coloring book and getting started, as you well know. But taking your coloring to the next level using crayons is a little more involved than that. There’s nothing more satisfying than rediscovering crayons after decades, and that’s just what many adults are doing as they pick up adult coloring or decide to venture away from colored pencils. Looking to take your crayon game to the next level?
Coloring with crayons isn’t difficult, but the more you practice and experiment over time, the more impressive your coloring will be. To color with crayons like a pro:
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- Find the best crayons for your needs
- Choose the right coloring book or pages
- Experiment with different coloring techniques
- Mix mediums for unique effects
- Practice and experiment regularly
- Find inspiration from other crayon colorists
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This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about making the most of crayons in your coloring practice.
Choose Your Crayons
The first part of using crayons to color like a pro is, naturally, choosing the right crayons. You might be thinking, “What do you mean? A crayon is a crayon, right?” And if so, you’re completely right. Crayons are essentially all sticks of pigmented wax, usually tapered to a point at one end. But there’s more to it than that to find the best crayon for your specific needs. Here, let’s take a look.
Quality
The first thing to look for is quality. Quality crayons contain a good level of pigment, allowing you to achieve bright, bold colors without having to push super hard. They’ll also glide across the page. But don’t worry – when many people talk about quality, it’s just a nice way of paying “expensive.” That’s not the case with crayons, fortunately, making them an accessible art medium for most people.
When shopping for crayons, do the same thing that you’d do when shopping for anything else:
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- Do research
- Talk to other colorists for recommendations
- Read product reviews
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Do all this and you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find how inexpensive a quality pack of crayons can be.
Color Range
Even the highest quality crayons aren’t going to be of much use to you if they’re not in the color range you generally like to use. Fortunately, gone are the days when crayon colorists had to make do with only using primary colors.
Nowadays, crayons come in any color range you can think of:
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- Classic
- Neon
- Pastel
- Glitter
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If you tend to color a range of subjects, you might want to pick up a large pack with a lot of variety so you’ll be covered for every situation.
Size
Lastly, size is worth considering as well, particularly if you suffer from a medical condition such as arthritis which makes gripping difficult. If this is the case for you, there are a couple of different ways to make coloring easier and more enjoyable for you:
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- Use jumbo crayons with a wider diameter
- Insert crayons into a padded grip designed for just such a thing (you might want to get multiple grips rather than having to change the crayon out each time you change colors)
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Check out more about crayons HERE!
Choose the Right Coloring Book or Pages
Although crayons can technically be used to color in any coloring book, it’s worth noting that crayons tend to dull more quickly than, say, colored pencils. So if you choose a book or coloring pages with super intricate designs, it’s going to mean a lot of sharpening. That doesn’t mean it isn’t doable, it just might end up slowing down your progress more than you would like. On the other hand, crayons are especially great for large shapes and landscapes – you can even rub them sideways to cover a large area at once.
Choose Your Technique
Coloring with crayons is far more than the typical back-and-forth sweeping motion you used as a child. These techniques will help you color like a pro and add interest to your pieces in no time.
Break It Up
No rule says every square inch of a coloring page must be covered. There’s a lot to be said for leaving some blank space to create depth and interest. These three techniques will allow you to do just that, which also allows you to cover large spaces more quickly and with less crayon used.
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- Stippling: involves making a series of “pinprick” dots to fill in a shape
- Hatching: using a series of parallel lines to cover a shape
- Cross Hatching: using intersecting lines to fill the shape in
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Keep in mind that with each of these, the closer together the patterns are, the darker they’ll appear; the further apart, the lighter.
Add Some Heat
One of the joys of coloring with crayons is making use of their wax base and allowing it to melt. This creates unusual effects that you can’t get with other mediums – one more reason to add crayons to your coloring repertoire.
You can do this by:
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- Melting the crayon after you’ve colored
- Heating the tip of the crayon and coloring while it’s soft
- Heating the coloring page and coloring before it cools
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A blow dryer is a perfect tool for melted crayon art – just be careful and use proper safety precautions.
Make Use of Texture
You might remember this one from childhood – put your coloring page on top of a textured surface, like:
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- Rough wood
- Cement
- Textured fabric
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Rub the crayon over it and the texture will show through, creating interesting details in your piece.
Scratch Off Technique
Another childhood favorite (because good techniques are for all ages) is the crayon scratch art technique. To do this one:
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- Color with crayon as usual
- Cover with black acrylic paint and allow it to dry
- Scratch patterns into the paint and the crayon will show through
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This might be a fun technique to use on a night sky, for example, creating more contrast and individuality than simply coloring the sky black using crayons alone.
Mix Mediums
One thing that a lot of colorists tend to forget is that it’s not only okay to mix mediums, it sometimes actually enhances the result. The trick to mixing mediums is to know what mediums will repel each other and which won’t.
Because they’re made of wax, crayons will repel most other art mediums:
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- Watercolor paint
- Colored Pencil
- Pen
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That doesn’t mean you can’t use them together, you just won’t necessarily be able to layer other mediums over the crayon. Sometimes this is a good thing, as is the case with watercolor paints. Since the paint won’t adhere to the crayon, you can paint over sections you colored with the crayon and it will show right through. This can create an interesting “negative” effect, especially if you use a white crayon.
It’s worth noting that you can usually layer the crayon over the other mediums, just not the other way around. The exception? Acrylic paint, which layers over crayon just fine. Using gesso on top of crayon also allows other mediums to be layered over it.
Practice and Experiment Regularly
It goes without saying that to improve, you need to practice regularly. This is true with coloring, and every aspect of life. But practicing, in the same way, all the time probably isn’t going to get you as far as you’d like. It’s also important to take risks and experiment during your practice sessions if you ever want to discover and master new techniques.
Find Inspiration
It’s easy to feel like coloring is done in a vacuum since we normally do it at home. But the truth is, there are a ton of other colorists out there using crayons like experts. The trick is finding them – online coloring forums and YouTube are great places to start. Here, you will find people sharing their work, discussing techniques, and giving advice and tutorials. The more you feel connected to a community and see all the amazing stuff other people are creating, the more motivated you’ll be to use that inspiration to create amazing work of your own.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, you’re inspired after reading this, and ready to find out just how much a crayon can do! It’s truly amazing to think that so many people disregard crayons as being for kids when there’s so much potential in them as an art medium. But now you’ve got all the info you need to get started, so get at it and remember to have fun!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you seal crayon art?
Crayon art generally doesn’t need to be sealed, and since crayons are made of wax there’s the possibility that a sealant won’t stick to the art. However, some crayon artists recommend using shellac or a workable fixative that’s made for wax-based mediums.
How do you store crayon art?
Store crayon art in a way that minimizes exposure to dust and direct bright light. This can be in a binder or an art portfolio, a frame with UV-filtered glass, or a box using tracing paper to separate each piece of art.
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