Crayons as pixels

Christian Faur's crayon art.

[#1 posted by TroofSeeker , February 25, 2009 4:26 PM]

Let this beautiful picture illuminate one good aspect of this otherwise depressing recession: there are a lot of artists with time on their hands to create projects like this one, all that SteamPunk stuff, and the windchime I'm building for me big brudder.

[#2 posted by HunterZ , February 25, 2009 4:38 PM]

I like the idea but not the execution. Most of the series is greyscale images with annoying color artifacts thrown in at random to make it look artsy. The color pictures are interesting, but they either don't use a wide variety of colors or use wacky colors (like the one pictured on BoingBoing that looks like a really poor analog TV signal).

[#3 posted by Anonymous , February 25, 2009 5:04 PM]

I do LEGO brick mosaics as a hobby, and I've thought about doing this (with crayons) for a long time. I wrote a software program to do the conversion of a photo into a hexagonal "grid" (since that's how the crayons are arranged), and converted into the nearest Crayola 64 color value. But I never went ahead with building them because of how crazy expensive crayons are when you need to get a LOT of them in specific colors. These crayon mosaics that Mr. Faur has created represent a surprising amount of money. I had no idea that anyone else had thought of doing this before, but I guess I should realize that any idea you are likely to come up with has already been thought of by someone else. So I'm a little disappointed, but at the same time, I'm really happy that someone has actually done it.

Anyway, the other thing that I'm thinking could be done on a hexagonal lattice like this is M&Ms, which also come in a nice variety of colors - and it's actually fairly easy to order them in bulk in specific colors. A candy mosaic like that might make a good birthday cake topper. The problem will be placing them carefully enough. Crayons are easy to arrange this way, and certainly LEGO bricks are as well. M&Ms might be a little difficult to place in a perfect lattice.

I need to make some sort of placement tool...

[#4 posted by Bekah , February 25, 2009 5:09 PM]

I think those 'annoying colour artifacts' are words produced using what appears to be Christian Faur's own colour language

[#5 posted by bruno boutot , February 25, 2009 5:16 PM]

It's all in the eye: Mark has chosen the best 2 images of the lot.

[#6 posted by Mitch , February 25, 2009 6:10 PM]

I really like the way that looks.

Maybe the cost could be reduced by cutting the crayons into thirds and sharpening the two
crayon slices that don't have points.

[#7 posted by ral8158 , February 25, 2009 6:43 PM]

Not interesting or new at all.
this is something someone would do in an art class at high school.

[#8 posted by afo , February 25, 2009 6:50 PM]

I can appreciate techniques that emphasize seeing it in person.

[#9 posted by oh not anymore , February 25, 2009 7:27 PM]

I'm not sure what you you grumps (#2, #7) are talking about, I friggin' love it!

[#10 posted by Antinous / Moderator , February 25, 2009 7:46 PM]

Not interesting or new at all. this is something someone would do in an art class at high school.

Could you provide us with some examples?

[#11 posted by owl7 , February 25, 2009 7:48 PM]

@#7, I certainly never did anything even remotely like this in high school and kids in my high school did some weird projects.

I think it's neat. Obviously required a great deal of patience.

[#12 posted by Takuan , February 25, 2009 7:53 PM]

would bundled nanotubes cut at precise angles work to make shadow pictures? At that scale could you control frequency as well and make coloured images?

[#13 posted by Ian70 , February 25, 2009 8:08 PM]

Reminds me of the folks (guy?guys?gal?) who used to do photos in jellybeans.

[#14 posted by andyhavens , February 25, 2009 8:16 PM]

Reminds me...

I was an arts/crafts counselor at a day camp for many summers as a kid/youth. One summer, when I was the assistant for the art room, the guy in charge, Dave, found a big (7' x 2') mural thingy that the kids in the school there had made during the year. They'd taken all the bits and scraps of crayons and glued them to the board in a kinda chunk-a-list montage; a picture of the school campus. Very cute.

Dave took one look at it and said, "I can improve this."

He leaned it up against the wall, got a can of Lysol and his lighter, and lit up a nice little on-the-spot blow torch. Which he applied, lightly, to the crayons. They melted together, just a bit, and turned what had been a cute yet forgettable crafty thing into a weird, wonderful, melty, slooshy work of art.

It was beautiful.

[#15 posted by Captain Obvious , February 25, 2009 10:13 PM]

ITS A FACE !!!

sweet picture of a picture btw

[#16 posted by nosehat , February 25, 2009 10:38 PM]

This is a really cool piece. If it were mine, I'd be so tempted to lay paper over the top of it and wiggle it around on top of the crayons.

[#17 posted by maxoid , February 25, 2009 11:08 PM]

@ #3, #6:
From what I understand, the artist cast his own crayons. It would be pretty easy to calculate exactly what you'd need for a piece, get wax in bulk, maybe color it yourself too, then cast all the necessary pieces. Far cheaper than buying pre-formed crayons, and more flexibility with the palette.

Which is not to say that it was cheap.

And, for what it's worth, I dig it.

[#18 posted by eltonbong , February 25, 2009 11:29 PM]

that is so sweet.

[#19 posted by Giraffe , February 26, 2009 2:24 AM]

yes!!! great idea, well executed.

[#20 posted by Gloria , February 26, 2009 7:31 AM]

Has anyone been to a public high school art class? The one I went to for four years was underfunded and underdeveloped. You have one person who genuinely wants to make art their career, a handful of people who enjoy art as an interest (I was among those), and the rest are delinquents and slackers who think art class is an easy grade and are in for some serious sticker shock.

Very few classes would allow free range to their students to make projects like this. We stuck to very traditional drawing and painting for our last year.

[#21 posted by Anonymous , February 26, 2009 7:45 AM]

Samsung did something similar a year ago for a print ad:

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/samsung_crayons?size=_original

[#22 posted by dofnup , February 26, 2009 9:54 AM]

Want ... to ... touch it! And smell it! @_@

[#23 posted by HOTDAMN , February 26, 2009 10:47 AM]

Really cool.

I'm getting a little tired of all the negative nancys on these here comment boards.

[#24 posted by ravenword , February 26, 2009 11:08 AM]

Very cool! If I squint my eyes a little bit, the effect becomes even better.

[#25 posted by Anonymous , February 26, 2009 11:20 AM]

It would be interesting to see what it looks like melted in an oven or with a torch.

[#26 posted by Anonymous , February 26, 2009 12:00 PM]

I tried this with M&Ms (using a computer program) and it was harder then you would think to get a good looking picture unless you made it very large because of the lack of good colors.

[#27 posted by Peaceflag2007 , February 26, 2009 12:44 PM]

I am amazed by the amount of negativity on this board!

Cool project

would like to see a bed of nails done this way

[#28 posted by Beca_is a geek , February 26, 2009 2:57 PM]

this is beautiful! I can just imagine the nice crayoni-smell while working with these :)