Crayon Micro-art
Sep/24/07 Filed in: Personal
We love crayons. For example, my family loves to eat out, and part of the reason is the crayons. Even in the most posh eatery, the kids get some paper and crayons to keep them entertained. We play games, take turns drawing Doctor Who aliens, and in the end fight over the last of a certain color that hasn't dropped into the unknown, dark depths of the beyond that lie beneath restaurant tables. We try simulating the experience at home, but it's just not the same.
We always loved crayons. For example, consider the "gravity proof incident." Long ago I joined a group of fellow scientists and engineers interested in debating wether we could explore more of space in less time by understanding the nature of space itself, or by developing more effective propulsion systems (basically, which way makes us go faster). One night, in a Blackened Voodoo-induced furor, I penned a decent proof that gravity is not a force. I awoke that (ahem) afternoon to find that Devin had colored my work with crayons. I liked it so much, I asked him to do the rest of the pages before I scanned and submitted them to the group. Math is more fun in crayons.
We still love crayons. Despite the kids both being too old really to do much in crayons, we still enjoy them. Take a peek at Ethan's gallery and see some his great work in this all-too-often shunned medium.
Then one day, quite recently, my parents gave Devin a small Chinese coin with two grains of rice painted to resemble people. Inspired by this, and slightly challenged by it, Devin took it upon himself to grab a crayon, and begin carving to test how small he could work. To everyone's absolute amazement, he carved the entire alphabet (ours, not Chinese) onto the back of a crayon.
This is a skill we will be watching more carefully, and if anyone has any suggestion as to carving tools suitable for a nine year old, I'd love to hear them. He now wants to begin rice carving and painting, but I'm at a loss as to how to hold grain of rice. I'm sure he'll engineer something for that as well, though.
In the mean time, I'm hoping to place that crayon on my office wall right next to his additions to my gravity proof. He just needs to build me a really small box...
We always loved crayons. For example, consider the "gravity proof incident." Long ago I joined a group of fellow scientists and engineers interested in debating wether we could explore more of space in less time by understanding the nature of space itself, or by developing more effective propulsion systems (basically, which way makes us go faster). One night, in a Blackened Voodoo-induced furor, I penned a decent proof that gravity is not a force. I awoke that (ahem) afternoon to find that Devin had colored my work with crayons. I liked it so much, I asked him to do the rest of the pages before I scanned and submitted them to the group. Math is more fun in crayons.
We still love crayons. Despite the kids both being too old really to do much in crayons, we still enjoy them. Take a peek at Ethan's gallery and see some his great work in this all-too-often shunned medium.
Then one day, quite recently, my parents gave Devin a small Chinese coin with two grains of rice painted to resemble people. Inspired by this, and slightly challenged by it, Devin took it upon himself to grab a crayon, and begin carving to test how small he could work. To everyone's absolute amazement, he carved the entire alphabet (ours, not Chinese) onto the back of a crayon.
This is a skill we will be watching more carefully, and if anyone has any suggestion as to carving tools suitable for a nine year old, I'd love to hear them. He now wants to begin rice carving and painting, but I'm at a loss as to how to hold grain of rice. I'm sure he'll engineer something for that as well, though.
In the mean time, I'm hoping to place that crayon on my office wall right next to his additions to my gravity proof. He just needs to build me a really small box...
Note that you can see more of Devin's artwork in His Gallery.
