More than Pancakes: Griddle Art

I saw an interesting idea the other day: to put paper on a electric griddle and use crayons on it. One afternoon, while the little kids napped, Will (age 7) and I attempted to try this technique. NOTE: With constant adult supervision, this was a good project for Will who follows directions well, but I won't try it with the other kids until they are a few years older. The griddle gets extremely hot, and even the melted wax on the crayons gets pretty warm. Will and I each accidentally touched something hot at least once; it hurt, but didn't leave any marks. We covered the griddle with foil, set it on high heat with the paper right on the foil, and we used a hot pad when we needed to hold onto the paper.

When the crayon is colored onto the hot surface, it glides and blends like paint. The more layers, the more intense the color. We tried a few different backgrounds -- watercolor paper, paper textured like canvas, and canvas. The watercolor paper was much smoother and accepted color more easily. But the canvas textures were better for the "stamping" we did because the wax and pigments didn't soak in as quickly. The fabric canvas was primed on one side, and we learned the hard way that if the primed-side is against the heat (rather than facing up), it smokes and makes quite a stink.

 On one of our first pieces, Will was using a crayon sideways to make the ocean blue faster. It quickly melted down to where he couldn't hold it, so we used a paper towel to pick up the crayon lump. Our sort-of-an-accident left a pattern where the paper towel touched, so we experimented some more with the stamping and wiping. On the red and orange picture, we folded a paper towel and rolled it into a spiral (that's what the round shapes are.) When he pressed the paper towel into the wax, it lifted off some of the color. We both liked that technique enough that we tried it with a crumpled paper towel on the yellow and green one. Except for the picture of the boat and kite (to the side of the boat) and butterfly, the other pieces will be used as backgrounds in some other artwork later. The greens and browns are going to be part of a collage with Boys' Life magazine pieces (that's the plan for now, anyway.) This was a fun way to use broken and extra crayons and we did notice a huge difference in crayon brands -- Crayolas gave us the most intense color, cheaper brands seemed too waxy and didn't give us the same blend-ability and saturation. Stay tuned for more!