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I love libraries. The Internet is fabulous for looking up stuff and finding any number of tutorials and advice on any number of topics but there is nothing like paging through a real book. A while back I discovered Nick Neddo, a Vermont artist, whose bio says his life-long pursuits are the "study of the natural world, Stone Age technology (popularly known as primitive skills) and creating art."
His books focus on making your own art supplies from nature -- everything from charcoal sticks and inks to brushes and paper. Including crayons. I don't use crayon much in my work but I did have some of the necessary bees wax on hand and popped it on our wood stove to start melting.
The instructions call for creating a very fine pigment by grinding stone. I, however, had come across some old mineral-based cosmetics -- a pinky blush and a taupe eye shadow -- and wondered if they might work instead.
Neddo uses hollowed natural twigs for his crayons but I had the idea of using old lip balm tubes and making roll-up crayons.
Above, you can see the melted wax with the blush powder mixed in. I suspect I went a little heavy on the powder. Neddo warns that can make for a crumbly crayon. Even with more time on the heat, I couldn't get the mixture to liquefy. So the lip balm tubes were out. Instead I scooped the wax onto a sheet of baking parchment.
A few minutes on the stove softened the wax and then I attempted to roll it into a cylinder shape.
Looks like toffee!
The eye shadow made a runnier mixture and I was able to fill two lip balm tubes. Now I had a chunky pink crayon and the two tubes of shimmery taupe.
Didn't achieve much colour with the eye shadow. The blush crayon was better. But not much return for the effort. Will I pursue this and go as far as grinding stone for pigment? Probably not. But the paint brushes made with animal hair and a feather ferrule sound intriguing. I could give that a try -- the books aren't due back at the library for another week! (Disclaimer alert -- It's a few months later and I still haven't gotten around to attempting making my own brushes! Sigh... this winter maybe?)
