Experimenting with Crayon Resist Painting

The kids like to do this craft because its like magic. First they have to draw a picture using crayons and then paint the picture with water colors. The picture they drew will then appear like magic when the crayon drawing/writing resists the water colors. We have done this crayon resist painting before but at the time we didn't have white crayons. So, when we got the kids new crayons with white crayons included we decided to do this water resist crayon painting again.

By experimenting a little we found that crayon resist painting works best in the following circumstances:

1. Use same color crayon as the paper. Eg. White crayons on white paper or Black crayons on Black paper. (You can't see what you are drawing but it will appear like magic when you paint over it).
2. The results will be better when the water colors are watery rather than thick.
3. Use dark water colors on light crayons and vice versa.

Thats it! If you follow the above simple rules, you can create very nice results, even with very young kids. Here are some examples:

This snowman was done by my 3 year old. I gave him a black crayon to draw a snowman on black paper. Then I got him to paint over his drawing with white water colors.

This one was done using white crayons on white paper. Then we painted over the drawing with water colors in rainbow colors.

This night scene was done using white crayon's on white paper and yellow crayons for the lights. We painted the scene with black water colors and the lights in the windows turned on like magic.


Crayon resist painting is very easy to do and very exciting for the kids. It is also a very creative craft as you can come up with very nice and different results by experimenting with different colors. You can create snow scenes to make Christmas Cards for the holidays, a night scene as seen above, an underwater scene etc. Its up to you. You can view more examples of our old crayon resist painting here.