You colored a lot of pictures, and spent a lot of time in coloring books as a kid. You figured that you would never again use coloring crayons when you grew up. But you were wrong. There are many things that adults can do to use crayons for a serious home artwork project. Crayons are easy to use, and you already learned how to use them as a child. They are not messy, and there are many shades. If you take the time, you can make a work of art with very vibrant colors.
As a child, you knew that coloring using a coloring book would give you a better picture than just coloring something from scratch. You can use that same principle to make a fabulous portrait or picture of your family. Anybody can go to the photography studio and pay several hundred dollars for a family picture worthy of framing. Everybody has these pictures in their home, and they are wonderful keepsakes. However, you can do an amazing colored portrait of your family using a digital camera or photo scanner, a photo editing software on your computer, a printer, and a large assortment of crayons.
Maybe you already have a favorite family photograph that you would like to use as your template. You can also begin with a digital camera. The lighting is not as important as it would be in a studio, but you still need to make sure that there is plenty of contrast in the picture. Have someone take the picture of your family. Use a white background (you will be able to use a different background later). Upload your picture to your computer, and begin editing your picture using one of the popular photo editing software programs. Edit a copy of the image so that the output is either a light black and white or outline print. For the background, you can repeat the process with another photo, a work of art, or your own hand drawn picture.
If you want to print it on a large sized paper, take your edited photo to a professional printer. Have them print the original and the outline. You may want to print multiple copies so that you don’t have to return to the print shop if you don’t like the result after your first attempt.
The next step is to color the picture with crayons. Use the color original as a guide. You don’t have to be perfectly true to the color of the original picture, but using it as a guide will give you a much better result. Take your time as you color, just as your first grade teacher taught you. Rub your finger on each color to equalize the shade and get rid of crayon marks.
You can buy a frame or build your own. Get a book from the library on framing if you want to make your own. You and your visitors will be amazed at the result.
Maybe you don’t want to take the time to color a family picture. You can also color and frame a contemporary style work of art, a bouquet of flowers, a landscape, an abstract picture, or anything you can dream up. You can use the same techniques as mentioned above with the computer and printer.
Try using cardboard to make certain parts of the picture standout in a 3D style. Try mixing up the colors, for example, make the grass blue, the sky orange, the clouds red. Try using all fluorescent colors in a piece. Try putting photos of your family member’s heads on animal’s bodies.
Once you begin to see how much fun this is, you’ll wonder how you every gave up crayons after grade school.
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