drawing and painting with love

You might think this is one of my kids’ craft projects, but it was actually created by yours truly. And you might say that it was created with just Crayola crayons and paint, but I prefer to call it a wax resist watercolor painting. Sounds fancier, doesn’t it?

I made this Valentine’s-themed wax resist watercolor painting way back in early January, right after the Christmas decorations came down. I guess I needed a little splash of color to replace the festive Christmas decor, and Valentine’s Day provided an easy motif to work with.

I grabbed a box of 64 Crayola crayons from my kids’ craft supplies and pulled out almost all of the pink, red, orange, and purple crayons. Then I drew one heart with each of those 15 crayons, sometimes filling in the heart and other times just making an outline. Next I got out my watercolor paint (just the kind for kids, not artist’s watercolors) and painted over most of the hearts with pink, red, orange, and purple. When the paint was dry, I popped the completed project into a frame that I recently spraypainted and called it art.

The picture above doesn’t quite capture the exact shades of color, but it’s close. And I didn’t even plan out the colors terribly well, so the fact that all the colors look coordinated instead of garish was pure luck.

Lovely pink, red, orange, and purple luck.