I recently read an article about an artist that uses crayons instead of watercolor, oils or chalk for his work.  The fascinating thing is that his works are truly art and people see their value as they pay handsomely for them.  

Children are often admonished to color inside the lines.  Free thinkers ignore this teaching. Todd Allen, a replanted Minnesotan, age 44 now resides in Gulf Shores, Alabama.  His art has the look of oils or acrylics.  He layers colors, a technique taught early by Don Marco, the famed crayon artist.  He plans to share the technique with Gulf Shore youth as he begins weekly art classes.

He has difficulty finding his preferred crayon, “antique Crayola Crayons”.  Crayola Crayons and brown paper grocery bags make up his supplies.  He uses 1000 white and 2000 black crayons each month.  His landscapes may take five months to complete.  Portraits take only two to six weeks.  

Other masterpieces selling for $25,000 take hundreds of hours to create.  Prints and reproductions are less costly.  He attends art festivals talking about his work and answering questions.  The Gulf Coast Shrimp festival held each October is his favorite.  People find it hard to believe that his work is created using crayons.

“Finders Keepers” is the subject of his work of the shipwrecked SS Republic.   This 2003 discovery off the coast of Georgia had a cargo of silver coins valued at $450,000 was lost in an 1865 hurricane.  His rendition of the first photos includes crabs and other marine life crawling through the wreckage.

Your child may be an artist just waiting to become the next Todd Allen or Don Marco.  Put crayons in their hands and use those grocery sacks.  Now that stores mostly use plastic that may be as hard to find as Todd’s “antique Crayola Crayons”.