(Colouring Sheets Included @ Bottom of Post)

Did you ever watch Mister Rogers when you were a little kid? My all-time favourite episode was the one where he takes the viewer to the crayon factory and showed us how crayons were made. I thought it was the most mesmerizing thing imaginable. Heck, I even wanted to WORK in a crayon factory when I grew up!

I was never formally trained to use crayons. Sure, I was like any young child who had a bucket of crayons and that magical ninety-six colour pack with a plastic crayon sharpener in the back, and I loved to draw with crayons. But when I first started drawing with crayons, I would hold them like a pencil and they would always break in half. It was not until I was working with children as an adult that one of my students declared, “You are holding your crayon wrong, Miss!” and then proceeded to show me how to hold the middle of the crayon between my index finger and thumb and gently colour at an angle. I was floored because it had taken twenty years for someone to explain in twenty seconds the reason why every single crayon in my crayon boxes would break in two.

Wax crayons are an unruly option when compared to other colouring methods. They are not as soft as the oil pastel nor do they blend as easily as the chalk pastel. They are not as fluid as watercolours and tend to emulate the texture of the surface underneath the paper. There are also different types of crayons: the inexpensive waxy, flaky crayons that barely have any colour; the crayons with the smooth, brilliant hues made out of soybean oil; and the very dense, yet brightly coloured crayons that are made out of recycled plastic and hard wax.

One thing I did learn was that everyone loves to colour–the quiet kids and the talkative kids; the boys and the girls; the “bad” kids and the “good” kids; the young kids and the older kids–all had a knack for colouring. I would just pass out some colouring sheets and a crayon box to the students whenever I wanted to decrease the noise level in the room during homework time.

So it was interesting to me when I was purchasing four boxes of crayons from a Back-to-School art supply sale and the cashier asked me if I was a teacher because I was buying so many crayons. I looked down, smiled, and replied, “No, no. These crayons are for me.”

I remembered that I did not need to buy a new colouring book because I already have a vast collection of black and white original colouring sheets saved on my harddrive from all the scanned images of my raw sketches. I bet a lot of us on Drunk Duck have a ton of black and white line drawings that could easily be converted into a colouring book for an older audience.

Here are two of my original black and white sketches for your colouring enjoyment. You can print up copies of these and colour with crayons or you can do an even more fun option and create your own colouring sheet with YOUR original characters!


PIN-UP STYLE




END OF SUMMER FUN




postscript

Rest in Peace, Wes Craven. I must have watched Scream one hundred times when I was in sixth grade.


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