He dChristian Faur is an artist based in Granville, Ohio. Looking for a new technique, he experimented with painting with wax, but he didn't feel the results were satisfactory. Then, at Christmas in 2005, his young daughter opened a box of 120 Crayola crayons he'd bought her, and everything clicked into place...ecided he would create pictures out of the crayons themselves...
...packing thousands of them together so they become like the coloured pixels on a TV screen
He uses this novel technique to create images such as portraits...
...a picture of bees in a hive...
...or incredible photorealistic scenes...
...all consisting entirely of wax crayons stacked together
He starts each work by scanning a photo into a computer and breaking the image down into coloured blocks
He then draws a grid that shows him exactly where to place each crayon
The finished artworks are packed tightly into wooden frames
Christian has also created a "crayon alphabet", in which each letter of the alphabet is represented by a different colour...
This allows him to hide messages in his paintings. Each work in his Forgotten Children series spells out the names of children, picked out in bright colours...
...woven into blurred, monochrome pictures of anonymous children
"One of the faces used in the series is a self portrait of myself as a child," says Christian, "rendered in the same style and with the same set of random common names, to appear similar in every to the other portraits, one portrait among the many"
Christian says he love the way each piece just looks like load of crayons when viewed up close...
...but comes into focus as you walk away from it
In case you wondering, no, he doesn't buy thousands of boxes of crayons...
...he actually makes the crayons himself...
...hand-casting each one in a mould
House Of Rain, 2007, and Above The Waves, 2007
Where the sidewalk ends, 2008
The Dance I + detail, 2006
In addition to his crayon paintings, Christian has produced other works which use his colour alphabet. Mating Jacket, above, contains coloured blocks which, when decoded and read vertically, spell out dozens of pick-up lines, such as "Your place or mine?", "I think I could fall madly in bed with you" and "Grab your jacket, you've scored"