Blending and Shading with Crayons

It is possible to achieve something quite special if you try one of these two styles and methods to blend crayon colors.

Solvents

Wax is softened with substances like baby oil or solvents like rubbing alcohol. Use caution when working with kids and potential toxic substances.

First color the piece of artwork as normal, even using varying pressures as we described above.

This is the fun part! Take a Q-tip and dip it in the baby oil or other solvent and then rub it lightly on the parts that you want to blend. This will soften the colors and make them blend.

As a tip, use one Q-tip per area as it does pick up the crayon wax as well. If you’ve used it in a dark area it would carry that pigment to a lighter area for example.

Solvents can give a whole new dimension to coloring with crayons and opens up new area of exploration with the medium.

Freehand Blending

First choose two crayons of the same color - dark green and light green for example.

With the darker color put pressure on the crayon to get a heavy mark on the paper. Color this section in and use less pressure where it comes to the area where the blending is planned.

With the lighter shade, color with lighter pressure over the blending zone and then add pressure where this color will be more dominant.

You can blend freehand with different colors. A rainbow is a classic experiment with this - have the colors from blue to red blend using different pressure from the primary colors to the combination colors like purple and orange.

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