Cheap Crayons for the Classroom
When you’re on a budget, you want the most affordable option. But will that option be disappointing and probably more expensive in the long run? Increasingly, the answer is yes. I’m going to break down three common classroom crayon options* for American teachers and parents to hopefully help you out.
School shopping is here, and for the past couple of weeks, our local Walmart has been putting out the blitz of school supplies, plenty with their “everyday low prices” and “rollback” labels promising great deals for parents and teachers. This year, the pen+GEAR store brand was prominently highlighted with boxes of 24 crayons “on sale”** for $0.25 each. Nearby, the 24-count Crayola crayons were “on sale” for $0.50 each, and the 24-count Cra-Z-Art crayons (not “on sale”) were $0.96 each. A quarter for a box of crayons seems like a godsend for a strapped teacher or parent, but I had my suspicions, so I picked up a box of each to test them out. (Bias disclosure: I have a degree in studio art, but on top of that, I have a lifetime of favoritism toward Crayola. That has been waning in recent years due to an observed decline in their quality, but it’s absolutely still a background bias.)
My original plan was to test only the $0.25 crayons and give a “trash or treasure” type verdict on them. I decided to try creating the kind of ambitious art a young, would-be artist might attempt at school, and found a reference picture of a boldly-colored butterfly with high contrasts, then set to work starting on my own rendition of it, just as a K-12 student might. (This is obviously leaning closer to high-school age in quality, but I made that deliberate decision to make it clear when a problem was a skill issue and when it was the crayon.) The drawing is done on pen+GEAR 9"x12" sketchbook paper, which is an affordable option many parents and teachers choose for school. (The sketchbook in question can be seen peeking out in the pink and dark pink edges in the photo below. Its cover was used as a smooth surface to prevent any texture from the table coming through.)
Almost immediately, things started to go south with the experience. These crayons are extremely soft, and even a light, standard coloring pressure was wearing the tips into a rounded lump. Coloring with the side of the tip to resharpen a crayon did not work. These crayons were never going to hold a point or be suitable for fine detail work. It was disappointing, but there are only a small number of K-12 children who typically notice, so I kept plugging forward. (For what it’s worth, this is why high school students start to develop the opinion that crayons suck. There are some excellent crayons in the world, but not all crayons are created equal, and schools often have the cheapest options.)
The next thing I discovered, as I started layering in more color to hopefully build a more saturated base, is that as these crayons wear down, they shed terribly. Tiny flakes of colored wax spread across the page like glitter, too clingy to be blown off with breath, but waxy enough to smear when I tried to brush them off with my hand or a cloth. I remember being a child who was fanatical about the white space on my artwork, but again, many kids don’t care, so I kept pressing forward. At this point, the struggle bus was becoming a battle I was determined to see to the end, even if it was clear I was not going to win anything here.
I had struggled through non-existent layering ability and being forced to blend colors with a blending stump, a technique most K-12 students don’t know. Crosshatching was inconsistent and scratchy with these crayons, with the quickly deteriorating tips alternating from barely visible lines to boldly saturated lines. I realized this is when a lot of students would give up and scribble the background, so I chose to do the same, rather than attempt something detailed, as the plant detail made it clear nothing else was going to happen with these crayons.
For me, the final straw came with the black crayon. I am someone who chases blackest blacks, without being involved in petty rights battles with other artists over it. I have coated my entire body in charcoal dust while chasing the richest black in charcoal drawings in the past. So, when the black crayon in this pack put dark gray on the paper, I was livid. I eventually resorted to putting additional pressure on the crayon, repeatedly going over the same areas to try to saturate the color, and that’s when things went straight into the abyss.
These crayons crumble. If you’ve ever had a crayon masher in your classroom or home, you know the feeling of a crayon broken into tiny pieces strewn across a table or floor. For early artists, this is entirely normal. No crayon is going to forever withstand the gorilla grip of a two-year-old. They are wax, and that ham fist is trying its hardest to do the best job to make the tool do the most work all at once. As children age, we teach them the skills to be more gentle and pay more attention to the tool in their hand. This is when broken crayons start to result in confusion and tears. And I have a feeling these ones are going to provide a lot of that.
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Before I finished the last quarter of wing, the black crayon had completely lost all of its point. It was time to peel the paper and try to sharpen it. The box didn’t come with a sharpener (most 24 packs don’t), so I dug out my trusty Crayola crayon sharpener from my personal collection. This is a sharpener that does a fantastic job with its own brand of crayons and has not given me any grief with others in the past. My first attempt was to use a very light pressure, which is typically all crayons need. I could feel a sticky type of resistance, and when I checked, there had been literally no sharpening on the crayon. I tried a little more pressure, knowing this is when a kid would jam the crayon in hard and crank on it, probably breaking it. The sticky feeling persisted, and there was only the most minimal amount of sharpening; I wasn’t even sure if it was the sharpener or just wax melting off the sides as it rubbed on the plastic. I gave it a little more pressure, turned the crayon again, and watched it crumble into pieces, some stuck inside the sharpener, and some falling on the table from the stump still in my hand. When I examined the sharpener, the wax stuck in it was soft and sticky, was annoying to remove, and needed to be removed before any other crayons could be sharpened.
At this point, I only had a fine ribbon edge on the wing left to color. I threw the broken crayon in the trash and pulled out a Crayola from my personal collection to finish it without issue.
It was the frustration of this experience that made me want to test it against the other brands, but I wasn’t interested in spending two more days creating two more drawings of the same butterfly. I decided to swatch out the colors instead, for a direct, side-by-side comparison. (And yes, that means I bought another set of the pen+GEAR so I could have a black crayon that wasn’t in tiny pieces.) That’s when another observation hit me. I noticed, upon opening the boxes, that there were different distributions of hues in them. These boxes did not contain the same color set. So, I took all of them out of their boxes and set to arranging them so that the matching colors were together and the differing colors were at the end of each set. (As a side note here, this also made it abundantly clear later on that the color of the crayon wax and the label gives almost zero information about what the color will look like outside its general hue family. The name on the crayon gives a better bet in most cases.)
I swatched these crayons using three approaches in one swatch. The first third is what I coined the “Considerately Cautious” child. This kid will carefully fill in the color space, without using too much pressure or layering. Sometimes they’re a “perfectionist beginner,” and sometimes they’re worried about wearing down the crayons too quickly and are trying to preserve the crayon's life. I coined the second third the “Technique Tester.” This is the kid who found a how-to-draw book in the bargain bin and now “knows how to color properly,” layering or crosshatching color to make it more saturated or blend colors, and sometimes outlining the coloring area first to create a barrier. They want their color to be even, beautiful, and without any white gaps. I coined the final third the “Master Masher.” You know this kid. The bane of crayon boxes everywhere. The source of the inch-long broken crayons in the classroom crayon bin. Whether it’s because they cannot allow a single white speck to exist anywhere or because they’re still working on the challenge of fine motor skills, this child leans on the crayon like their life depends on it, mashing the wax into the paper for all they’re worth. I swatched them on copier paper, which is what many classrooms rely on for cheap drawing paper and what kids use when they draw on the back of their worksheets.
The experience swatching pen+GEAR crayons was pretty much the same as drawing on sketch paper with them. The color is slightly more even on the smooth copier paper, but it continued to be desaturated to differing extents, and layering or mashing created flakes of color (visible in the white areas of the swatch chart). Using the mashing technique, larger, saturated globs of wax started sticking to the paper. I would honestly only use these crayons with children who are just learning to color (toddler to Pre-K). They’re cheap enough to be replaced when they’re broken too badly to salvage anymore, and they’re a good teaching tool for learning fine motor skills and being careful with tools.
The mashing technique issue carried over into the Cra-Z-Art crayons. These colors were vibrant and much more saturated, but the experience of coloring with them could only be described as “sticky.” They didn’t wear down quite as quickly as the pen+GEAR under gentle use, but layering the color started to reveal their stickiness, and mashing not only left copious globs of wax on the paper, it also made an unpleasant plek sound when the crayon was lifted. There was also less consistent saturation in the colors. There was a limited ability to reshape the tips through coloring. They did wear down less than the pen+GEAR but more than the Crayolas. These would be fine crayons for most Pre-K to Grade 6 students, but students who are jumping ahead in their skill sets are going to start feeling dissatisfied with them. They’ll also wear down pretty quickly in the hands of a Master Masher.
The Crayola swatching experience, on the other hand, can only be described as silky, and this is even after acknowledging my bias. They have a smooth, consistent color application. Layering works well, but still leaves a little paper showing through unless there are multiple passes of the crayon. Mashing with these crayons does increase the saturation and coverage, but it doesn’t leave nearly as many clumps, and the sticky feeling isn’t really present. The tip holds its shape well and can be reshaped with an appropriate coloring technique. I was able to get the crayons to chip/shed with strong pressure, but not nearly to the extent of the other two brands. Crayola crayons absolutely will break, as any crayon bin will attest, but the feel in hand and their performance on swatching are both much more durable. Nothing feels soft or squishy with these crayons. I would honestly put these in the hand of any child of any age. $0.50 is a reasonable price, and even if you have to purchase them outside the “back to school” season, they are usually affordably priced. Their brand has also built a collection industry, where niche color sets, such as diverse skin tones, pastels, metallics, and glitter colors are available as children become more advanced and want more color options at their disposal. And, they’re great for adult hobbyists, too! (If you’re an adult wanting to level up your hobby or go professional, however, Crayola’s “adult” line is not the way to go. They are disappointing, but that’s a discussion for a different post. In the meantime, I can suggest browsing Sarah Renae Clark’s YouTube channel*** for more ideas! She has tons and tons of product comparisons and demonstrations that are helpful for colorists.)
I wish everyone who is currently enduring the back-to-school season a less stressful experience! Hopefully, this can help guide at least one of your purchases so both you and your child or classroom can have better experiences this fall and in the upcoming school year. Here’s to a successful, artsy school year!
* Not sponsored, not affiliated. I am looking at the options that were available in the school supplies aisle at our local Walmart.
** The words “on sale” are in quotes here because I have a lot of issues with “sale pricing” in box stores, the least of which is that it’s usually not the bargain most people think it is.
*** Again, not sponsored or affiliated. I just absolutely love the work Sarah has put into making coloring a fun and exciting hobby for others and creating useful resources for artists.
