Wax pencils for children: choice, properties, drawing features. Wax pencil: instructions for use, reviews What are wax pencils for drawing made of?

Since invention cousins Edwin Binney and Harold Smith in 1903, colored pencils became an almost integral part of children's lives. Remember your childhood and your children's albums, dotted with colorful scribbles of inept lines and strokes. Drawing with colored pencils, perhaps, has not bypassed a single person on Earth, because drawing lessons begin with kindergarten and continues in primary school school with pencils, along with watercolors.

No other commercial product can match the versatility of the pencil. The most important thing is that wax crayons are absolutely non-toxic and are made from natural materials, are eco-friendly and available in over 120 colors. In fact, with their help you can get a lot more colors and shades, mixing them directly on paper during the drawing process.

Pencils and crayons certainly play important role in developing a child’s craving for creativity. As for the market for these products, here we see several different types pencils: regular classic, glow-in-the-dark (luminescent), flavored, glitter and water-soluble. But despite the variety, they all have the same basic ingredients: paraffin and pigments that determine their specific color.

Manufacturing methods

First we need to make paper tubes. They will not only serve as a form for our homemade drawing supplies, but will also protect our hands from stains in the future.

The tubes are very easy to make. You just need to wrap several layers of any paper on a round blank of suitable diameter, gluing the layers with PVA glue so that they are dense enough. How many layers will have to be wound depends on the thickness of the paper itself. The end result should be tubes similar to those shown in the illustration.

There are only two methods for making homemade drawing supplies themselves.

First method, similar to the industrial method, however, available for reproduction at home with your own hands.

First, melt paraffin or stearin from candle stubs (beeswax will also work). Add regular food coloring and about one tablespoon of boiling water to the melted paraffin. All this needs to be thoroughly mixed until the color of the mixture is uniform and poured into molds, that is, into those same paper tubes.

In industrial conditions, special hardeners and pressing are used to give pencils the necessary hardness, but we can do without it.

Second method, no less affordable way Making crayons for drawing with your own hands involves using regular soap instead of paraffin.

You will need half a glass of soap flakes, again food coloring and boiling water. Soap flakes must first be dissolved in hot water. There should not be a lot of water, but just enough so that the mixture has the consistency of a paste. If you pour too much water and the mixture is not thick enough, you will have to evaporate it.

After dissolving the soap flakes completely until the paste is uniform, add food coloring to it and mix it all until the color is uniform. Make sure there are no air bubbles in the paste, otherwise the crayons will become brittle. And finally, pour it into your paper tubes and leave them to dry for a day.

You can also easily make new wax crayons from broken or scribbled ones. Just melt them and pour them into molds.

If you later wrap the pencils in colored paper or original wrapper, then they may well become the most an original gift self made.

By the way, one of the most interesting facts about colored pencils: the average child uses about 700 pencils, from his first attempts at drawing until he is ten years old.

Many exercises have been invented to develop fine motor skills. Drawing with pencils is one of the most loved by children. Fortunately, today manufacturers offer huge selection such instruments: in a body made of wood and wax, triangular and round in cross-section. Let's talk about each type in more detail.

Traditional pencils in a wooden case

Boxes with bright rods in a wooden “wrapper”, familiar from childhood, are the traditional tools of all young artists. How to choose best option for your child?

• Sectional shape. For the first creative experiments, objects with three sides are best suited. They teach the child in advance how to properly hold drawing and writing utensils in his hand. In addition, trihedrons are difficult to lose - if they fall from the table, they will not roll under the sofa. Hexagons have similar parameters. But it is better to refuse round sets.
• Lead hardness. It is important that the lead does not crumble in the body. Then the pencil will be easy to sharpen even with children's hands and will not become unusable after the first fall.

Watercolor pencils

Watercolor sets are the same paints placed in a wooden case. The rod itself is made of pressed watercolor. Drawings made using this technique are brighter and more expressive than regular pencil drawings. If the image is wet, it will be visually indistinguishable from a watercolor picture.

Wax pencils

Such sets are made of wax, which is tinted food coloring. The pencil leads are soft, so little artists can create clear colored lines without any extra effort. In addition, they are easy to sharpen. Wax kits are suitable for first colorings with large details.

We decided to buy drawing materials to surprise and delight little artist. Don't know what to choose? What is better for a child to draw? Our short review will help to do right choice and not get lost among professional brushes, paints, pastel crayons and other “specific” art supplies.

Drawing materials: pencils, paints, markers or wax crayons?

When asked what is best to buy: colored pencils, paints, markers or wax crayons– There will be only one CORRECT answer – EVERYTHING at once. And the point here is not the banal “I don’t know what to choose, I’ll take everything,” but the fact that for a child to fully develop, he needs to experiment as much as possible. We should not impose cliches and strict rules on him, but should show him the peculiarities of working with one or another artistic material in order to broaden his horizons and give him the opportunity to CREATE according to own rules. Let him try to draw with colored pencils, let him feel that the line drawn with a felt-tip pen is different from a pencil line, let him be convinced in practice that watercolor loves water, and gouache needs to be diluted to the state of thick sour cream, let him understand by touch the difference between wax and pastel chalk... Let him !

Let your motto be the rule: “You need to study to the maximum.” good materials, which we can afford."

Using dried felt-tip pens, dart brushes and blotting paper, it is impossible to fall in love with drawing and become a small, but already an artist. Treat children's creativity with understanding: do everything possible so that the child has access to different materials, masters different techniques and tried, tried, tried...

Colored pencils: what to look for

Pencils - this is the most popular and accessible tool for children's creativity. The richness of color, ease of handling, and benefits for developing fine motor skills make them an ideal material for artistic creativity very young children.

If your choice is colored pencils, make sure that they are soft and well sharpened, then drawing with them will be a pleasure.

Suitable for little ones short pencils, they are easier to manipulate (less likely to get into the eye and get injured due to negligence). Don’t try to buy a large set at once, limit yourself to 6-12 colors: for the first time this will be enough, otherwise the baby will simply start going through all 36, 72... pencils, trying dot by dot, as they draw on paper.

It is best to give babies thick faceted pencils (triangular), they fit comfortably in the hand, do not slip out, and the child learns to regulate the pressure. It is better to buy pencils with a round section for older children.

Teach your child to handle his colored helpers carefully, explain that pencils do not like to be thrown. They begin to break from resentment and do not want to sharpen.

If you are choosing colored pencils for an older child who wants to learn to draw professionally (in art school, studios, etc.), approach the choice of pencils very responsibly. At first glance, it may seem that there is nothing complicated in the technique of drawing with colored pencils, because even small children decorate coloring books and scribble pencils on paper. In fact, professional artists They will tell you that pencils also have their secrets, much depends on the softness and composition of the lead, and the quality of the wood. Sometimes the strokes do not overlap each other, lie loosely, with gaps, do not give a bright color, some pencils require frequent sharpening, break, crumble and other “bad” moments.

Trustworthy manufacturers include: Faber-Castell(Germany). This company has been on the market for more than 200 years, German quality is at its best, even when it comes not to complex microcircuits, but simple pencils for drawing. Faber-Castell is one of the leaders in the stationery market.

The arsenal includes various product lines: there are pencils for children 3-12 years old (“red line”), for hobbies (“blue line”), for professionals (“green line”).

Pencils also have good characteristics KOH-I-NOOR, JOVI, Crayola, SILWERHOF and etc.

Paints: which ones are better?

Paints(watercolor, gouache) are suitable for older children - from about 5 years old, since handling them requires certain skills and dexterity. But this does not mean that it is strictly contraindicated for a 3-year-old child to buy paints. At this age, finger gouache has proven itself to be excellent. Hands, legs and other parts of the body actively participate in the creation of masterpieces and the little creator’s knowledge of the world.

IN preschool age They usually begin their acquaintance with painting using gouache paints, since the technique of painting with them involves numerous overlaps and corrections, which cannot be said about watercolors.

I would like to advise caring parents not to skimp on quality materials. Russian ones have proven themselves well “Gamma”, “Sonnet”, “Ray”, “Black River”. Artistic gouache differs from the poster one in quality, so if your child is seriously interested in drawing, buy this one.

Buy a large jar of white gouache (it is usually the first to go) and several popular colors so that you can create new shades. The set must contain yellow, red, blue, white and black, and the rest can be obtained by mixing. Ready-made sets gouache - not the best the best option, if a child draws often and a lot, the containers there are small in volume and often there are not quite the “right” colors with mother-of-pearl, sparkles and other enticements that give an effect, but do not allow you to fully appreciate the capabilities of the material.

It is believed that it is more useful for young children to draw while standing or lying down than sitting at a desk with a sheet of paper in front of them.

Watercolor paints enter the lives of young artists, as a rule, a little later. Watercolor loves water, so all smudges and blurs are features of the technique, and not shortcomings of the work. Many kids are scared by this, they think that the drawing was unsuccessful and completely ruined. This is wrong. The color in watercolors must be pure (this applies to any paints), you should not mix more than three colors at the same time, it’s good when the paper is visible, sometimes even some places are deliberately left unwritten.

When choosing watercolors, you should pay attention to the manufacturer. St. Petersburg paints have proven themselves well; most often they are sold in ditches or tubes. Pay attention to these names: “White Nights”, “Sonnet”, “Ladoga”, “St. Petersburg”, “Leningrad”.

For the first samples, it is not necessary to immediately buy a large expensive set; pay attention to the color palette. Paints should not be faded, chalky, or bleached. It is advisable that the set does not include white and glitter. White in watercolor is water; if you want to make the paint lighter, you just need to add more water, and not white paint (as in gouache). This is a significant difference between watercolor and gouache or acrylic, where the paints lie tightly on the paper, overlapping the previous layers. Watercolors are painted with glazes, so that the bottom layer is visible through the top stroke. This creates rich color combinations.

Paints in tubes are convenient because you can squeeze the right amount onto the palette and add as needed without dirtying the entire container with your brush. But then a minus comes up - you can’t put the extra paint back into the tube. The cuvettes are sold both as a set and separately; there is always the opportunity to purchase more popular colors.

If your child wants to decorate the coloring book with paints, choose thicker paper. In general, for watercolors it is best to take thick, corrugated paper, and for thick paints (for example, gouache), ordinary Whatman paper is also suitable.

For watercolors it is best to use round ones. soft brushes: squirrel, kolinsky. For gouache – flat brushes made of bristles or synthetics.

Long live markers!

Available drawing material. Their usefulness is currently in doubt. This does not need to be taken literally: you can and should draw with felt-tip pens, but in certain situations you should not limit yourself to them.

A small child should have the opportunity to draw NOT ONLY with felt-tip pens.

The harm lies in the fact that not all modern felt-tip pens can boast good quality(many do not wash, a child can put it in his mouth and “eat something inedible”) and the richness of the color palette. Bright, unnatural colors negatively affect a child’s perception of color.

And the second negative point is that it is much easier to draw with felt-tip pens than with pencils, the thickness of the line does not depend on the pressure, nor does the brightness of the color. Pencils are better for training fine motor skills, are a kind of preparation for writing ballpoint pen. Therefore, high-quality soft pencils much more “useful” for the development of the baby’s hand.

Of course, a little artist should have felt-tip pens in his arsenal. Give preference to proven companies ( Carioca, Maped, Giotto, Crayola), choose felt-tip pens that are optimal in thickness (for the little ones it’s better to take faceted ones). Don’t chase brightness, let the colors be as close to natural as possible. Make sure that the markers do not dry out, because drawing with a “shaggy stick”, which leaves a barely noticeable mark on the paper, is not a pleasant pleasure, and the habit of putting a felt-tip pen in your mouth so that it writes better is, believe me, not the best, given the “chemistry” "and simply for reasons of hygiene.

For the little ones, it is important that the markers are washable; you don’t want body art forever? And be sure to pay attention to the thickness of the rod, because children at this age do not always know how to regulate pressure; they want to quickly paint over a large surface of the sheet.

Child psychologists advise placing a pencil or felt-tip pen in the child’s hand correctly, which in the future will help them learn how to hold a pen correctly when writing.

Kids love to bang markers on the table. Not every “nose” will withstand such a test; many even go deep into the body the first time, so if you notice this peculiarity in the behavior of a little artist, look for felt-tip pens with a special skirt that will prevent the rod from disappearing somewhere there...

And caps! If they are too small, the child may have difficulty closing/opening on his own and accidentally swallow (ugh, of course) small detail. Transparent caps eliminate the need to look for the right one to cover a certain color - this can be regarded as a plus when it comes to a child who still has difficulty distinguishing colors or an adult who is simply too lazy to waste time looking for a cap desired color, when you already have a whole bunch of open “sticks” in your hand.

Are wax crayons made by bees?

Wax crayons - popular material for children's creativity. They are made from wax or paraffin, so they are relatively harmless even for the little ones. Wax crayons, like regular pencils, can be easily sharpened with a knife.

The peculiarity of this material is that the color lies tightly, sometimes it is even difficult to mix several shades on paper. The drawing turns out bright and expressive.

Disadvantage: they often break, the line is quite thick, which creates some inconvenience when you need to paint small details.

For those who don’t buy wax crayons for kids because they constantly break, I’ll reveal little secret. Wax crayons for babies are available in the form of pebbles and blocks - They are easy to hold in the handle and do not break! There are even crayons shaped like eggs.

It is inconvenient to color small images with wax crayons. Let the child simply draw with them on a large format - this way there is room for his imagination to run wild little genius. Excellent artistic technique– combining drawings with wax crayons and watercolors.

High-quality wax crayons are produced by companies such as Stockmar, Faber-Castell, Crayola.

These are not all the recommendations that can help novice artists. We will definitely return to this topic to talk in more detail about the various art materials and techniques. Ask questions in the comments, we will definitely help you with your choice!

Sooner or later, every driver and car owner wonders how to remove minor scratches on a car, and a wax pencil may be the way out of this situation. The need for its use is associated primarily with such an eternal problem as the state of our roads, most of which can only be called directions.

The reasons for the appearance of minor surface damage on the paintwork of a car are sudden temperature changes in the weather, as well as gravel, crushed stone, and ice chips falling on the car in winter. From an economical point of view, there is no need to constantly repaint those car parts that have damage, be it scratches on the surface of the hood, roof or doors of your car.

The following came to help in solving similar problems with cars: useful developments specialists in this field, such as various types of correction pencils, markers, sets and repair kits, presented mainly by foreign manufacturers. It is only important to know the principle of operation of such an invention as a wax pencil for removing scratches from a car’s paintwork, and to be able to use it correctly.

Indications for use and characteristics

Wax pencil has become widespread in our country; similar products and their analogues are in high demand in the car accessories market. It is worth noting that in European countries, as well as the USA, similar products for cars appeared quite a long time ago, and they will no longer surprise the sophisticated foreign car enthusiast.

It is recommended to use a wax pencil to avoid the spread of corrosion and other destructive processes of metal parts of the car - fenders, sills, doors, etc. A slight rusty point due to the impact of temperature changes on it, as well as moisture, dirt and other negative aspects inherent in frequent use and the car being on the street, it can turn into a through hole in the metal.

To avoid such problems, the removal of minor scratches on the car body must be timely and of high quality. The pencil cannot be used in all cases, or rather, only to eliminate certain types of damage to the car coating. This is explained by the fact that for such damage to the paintwork, in which not only the varnish coating and the pigment layer of the paint peels off, but there are deeper scratches with the removal of the primer layer down to pure metal, it is necessary to use more serious and durable materials and means.

Similar deep scratches can be observed on the longitudinal parts of the body, which are more susceptible to accidental mechanical impact - along the surface of the wings and doors. Wax can only visually cover the characteristic minor damage on the car. No matter how professionally representatives of the advertising industry try to convince us, these pencils and their analogues do not eliminate scratches, but only make them less noticeable.

Wax pencil is a decorative product consisting of a composite of waxes of natural and chemical (synthetic) origin, combined into a homogeneous mass through the use of so-called industrial (industrial) oil.

The pencil also contains a corrosion inhibitor and a coloring element (pigment). Corrosion inhibitor is a chemical compound or its composition, the presence of which in an aggressive environment slows down the process of metal corrosion.

Preparatory measures and method of application

To repair minor scratches and damage yourself, the following will be useful:

• alcohol-containing substances;
• rags or woolen fabric;
• lint-free fabric;
• napkins.

Stage 1 – cleansing. This can be done with an ordinary wet rag soaked in a soap solution, after which you should wipe the surface with a damp rag that does not contain any cleaning agents, and then dry it with a piece of dry and clean hygroscopic (moisture-absorbing) fabric.

The preparatory procedure will eliminate the presence of various microparticles of dirt and dust on the damaged surface. The next stage of preparatory measures is degreasing. Any available product will be useful here, the main property of which is the breakdown of fats (lipids). Among the most common ones we can mention:

• pure medical alcohol;
• acetone;
• 646th and 650th solvents;
• high octane gasoline;
• xylene;
• solvent

To apply the degreaser, use a lint-free cloth. White chintz is suitable for these purposes. Next, we proceed to apply a wax layer to the damage. The manipulation must be carried out with careful movements, first across and then along the scratch, paying attention to the smallest damage. If a certain part of the excess wax gets onto neighboring, undamaged areas, remove it with a napkin.

The most favorable body surface temperature for applying wax is 20 ˚C, therefore, for the procedure to be effective, it is worth using heating aids in the form of a heat gun or a hair dryer. Now the surface treated with a wax pencil needs to be polished with soft materials, for example, a piece of felt or woolen fabric.

In the future, given the temporary nature of the wax coating, in order to extend the service life of the latter, it is recommended to avoid washing the car too often. In addition, it is advisable to avoid leaving the car outside for long periods of time, especially in adverse weather conditions.