Marc John Israel: The Crayon Filipino Artist

Marc John F. Israel (blueprince312) was born in Tubigon, Bohol. His interest in art was evident at the age of 12. During his high school years, his best buddy who happened to be an artist convinced him to sign up for Drafting/Civil Technology course. Their teacher recognized his creative skills and saw great potential in him in which made him driven to excel in his craft. All projects, homework’s, and “plates” as they called it in drafting class was an outpour of effort and determination. Regrettably, unable to finance education due to financial reasons, art was set aside to make ends meet. However, this was short live and at 2012, he quit his day job to return to what he loves the most – drawing.

“My first dream was to be an author of a comics or manga so I started searching tutorials until I came across realism. Inspired by it, I began learning pencil shading, and from that, I started creating beautiful portraits; which then, evolved into colorful drawings and paintings. Pretty soon, everything was bursting with life! Poverty has its sunny side indeed. Because the only medium I had and could afford was a box of Crayola, I had to make dew of the only thing I had and it was worth it because contrary to my previous beliefs that this will not really amount to anything; I was actually able to make very good masterpieces out of crayons. This made me value crayons even more.”

As an aspiring self-taught Filipino artist known for using Crayola crayon as medium, he honed his skill further by joining Deviantart and community groups in Facebook. He also touched basis with artist heroes such as “Don Marco,” the world’s master crayon artist in which he gave him valued tips on developing a technique to create fine art using Crayola crayons. He also took inspiration from the likes of Artgerm, Joongwon Jeong, Dirk, Heather Rooney, Diego Fazio, Corrine and other great artist he can find on DeviantArt and Facebook.

A desire to create a masterpiece starts from the imagination and then, the artist takes little steps that move the creation in the right direction. The artist does not wait for the right time or the perfect atmosphere to draw. Seizing the moment is the simple beauty and concept of Crayola art. Children do it all the time. It’s a simple technique towards expanding an artist creative energy by taking advantage of this fun and economical art medium. The key to fine art of Crayola art is developing their technical skills through a working knowledge of how to use crayons according to another master Crayola artist, “Jeffrey Robert.”

At present, his works lean more towards realism and currently altering cards of Magic the Gathering and is an active administrator of an Facebook art group—“Art Freedom.” He is also an active member in “GuhitPinas” and an admin in their subgroup “Guhit Pinas Bohol” and specialty group “GP Pastels and Crayon Artists.”

“Despite all the artworks and projects that have made me feel proud about myself, I believe that there is still so much to learn in this field.” ~ Marc John Israel