Resist Painting

The False Indigo plants are in bloom.

Hi Friends,

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Hauser & Wirth video about artist Luchita Hurtado where she very briefly mentioned her “resist” paintings done with crayon and black ink. That captured my attention, and I remembered a painting I did many, many years ago using crayons and watered down acrylic paints. It’s a self portrait with my cat Enzo. Some of you may remember him.

Hurtado’s comment sparked my interest in revisiting crayons used as a resist. I have a box of Lakeshore crayons in eight colors, and I started there along with my Kuretake sumi inks. Here’s my first experiment with them.

The effect is stunning, and I was hooked. I love the texture created by the crayon resist and the black ink. I ordered a large set of Crayola crayons — 152 colors including fluorescents, glitters and metallics. Who doesn’t love a brand new box of crayons?

Here’s the second piece done with my expanded color selection. I decided to try some collaged spirograph images underneath, but I think that makes the piece too busy.

Next I started to play with doodles. This one is concentric circles, and I’m thrilled with the way it turned out.

Then I tried a piece painted on top of a page torn from an old book. When you see it up close, you can barely make out the text and an image at the bottom of the page. The overlapping vertical and horizontal lines are meant to look like weaving.

In this piece I let more of the black show through.

The piece below is my favorite of the scribbles.

Creating these pieces wasn’t completely trouble free. I ran into some problems early on when I tried black crayon and gold paint. It didn’t work at all. I also couldn’t get the resist effect with black India ink.

Oil pastels work, but conte crayons do not. And watercolor paints can be used in place of the sumi ink.

Next I began to work on integrating these resist drawings into my mixed media work. This is an early piece using a couple of pieces of crayon resist, sumi ink, cutouts from magazines, a spirograph image, and a checkered paper napkin.

And this is a later piece using crayon resist, sumi inks, collaged paper napkins, and acrylic paints.

Below is a larger piece that I think is rather handsome. I like the mysterious darkness of it. The crayon resist underneath barely shows through.

I’m not sure where this work is going, but I’m having fun, and that’s the most important thing, right?!!

Where are you finding fun these days? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts. You can share them with us in the comments section below.

With love and appreciation,
Cassandra