Pencil Art

Peace, tolerance, respect, love, pride, humanity…

June is Pride Month. It makes sense to use the rainbow to draw attention to the fact that it doesn't matter who you love or how you define yourself.

So don't forget: You are wonderful, lovable and good just the way you are!

Material:

Crayons in the colors of the rainbow (thicker pencils are better for beginners)

Ruler

Scalpels (various sizes)

Needle

Pen

Eraser

Optional:

saw

carving knife

Take your pens and measure the length of the shortest. Everyone else is brought to this length. The easiest way is to mark the respective area with a pen and use a saw to cut the crayons. My crayons are 5 cm long.

To get to the mine, the wood must be removed. Since I own a carving knife, I'll do it with it. You can also use a scalpel or a cutter. Be carful, you'll need your fingers in the future.

It is important that you determine the diameter of the mine beforehand and think about how big the letters should be.

I decided for a length of 2 cm, since my letters should be 1.2 cm in size later on. This ratio matches the thickness of the mine. The letters do not start directly on the wood, so I removed 0.8 cm more of them.

The mine is almost a cylinder. To carve the letters into the mine, it must be smoothed. For this you use a larger scalpel (cutter). Scratch one side first, then right opposite the other side.

Use a pencil to draw your respective letters on one of the smooth sides. I use a normal fine liner. Then use a needle to scratch a little bit of the lead around the outline of the letter.

If the colored marking comes off, you can use these thin cracks to orient yourself.

These also serve to prevent pieces from breaking out of the mine, which can easily happen.

With smaller and/or narrower scalpels you have to remove everything that don't belong to the letter.

For the inner parts I took a needle or a very narrow scalpel. It depends on how small this part is, which should be removed inside the letter.

Be careful, because it can easily happen that the mine breaks, or larger parts break out.

I want to carve the term PRIDE into the crayons. The word has only five letters, but the rainbow has six colours.

That's why I decided to carve a series of hearts into the last ones. I did the same thing as I did with the letters.

Because I still had a leftover piece of the red letter, I carved the entire acronym LGBTQIA+ into it.

When you have all your stuff done, you can rub gently over the letters with an eraser. This makes them shine a little more.

This is what the finished letters and hearts look like when they are next to each other.

The last photo shows my very first attempt at carving something into crayons. I did that some time ago.