Stunning Crayon Pixel Art By Christian Faur

Christian Faur is a Granville, Ohio-based artist who uses hundreds of thousands of individual crayons to produce a single, pixelated artwork. He doesn’t create his crayon art by coloring like we did as kids though. Think of this as Pointillism using the crayon itself.

“My earliest memories of making art involve the use of wax crayons. I can still remember the pleasure of opening a new box of crayons: the distinct smell of the wax, the beautiful crayon colors, everything still perfect and unused. Using the first crayon from a new box always gave me a slight pain.”

Looking for something new, Christian experimented with various painting techniques, wax techniques and all sorts of other art mediums, but he just didn’t feel good about his results. Then, in 2005, his young daughter opened a box of 120 Crayola crayons he’d bought her for Christmas, and everything clicked into place… His sculpture art has now been exhibited in dozens of times in galleries across the US.

“The works of art completely disappear and the optical illusion is lost when viewed from close up, allowing one to read the horizontally sequenced crayon text and to take in the beautifully colored crayon tips — all the while being reminded of that first box of crayons.”

However, I find his pixel art technique not artistic at all – he starts each work by scanning a photo into a computer and breaking the image down into colored blocks that show him exactly where to place each crayon. It’s more or less how a CRT monitor works. Is this unique art? Or just a clever technique that needs nothing more than patience and a lot of hard work? Check out his crayon sculptures below.

Website: christianfaur.com