Crayola

Come back in time with me to when you were a kid. You're in a creative mood, and you pull out the markers and the paper, and you spread out your stash on the kitchen table in preparation for an afternoon of drawing and coloring. You decide the first picture you will draw will be of your house. So you draw your house, although it probably doesn't look much like your house because your house probably isn't square with a triangle on top. But it'll do.

Now that your house is done, what else could you draw next except your family? So you draw Dad and Mom, yourself, whatever siblings you might have, and perhaps even the family cat or dog. You encounter a problem, though, when you start sifting through your markers to bring some color to your paper. Your skin tone will have to be either white, yellow, orange, pink, or some variation of the three, which unfortunately doesn't work too well with markers. Perhaps drawing people with markers is just an impossibility?

An impossibility no longer. I received a shipment of Crayola products at Staples this week, in which I discovered a new box of markers meant to solve these coloring problems. They were called "Multicultural" markers, and they included eight skin-tone colors including Tan, Beige, Tawny, Gold, Beige, Bronze, Terra Cotta, Mahogany and Sienna. Gone are the days where children present their parents with family portraits where each family member appears highly sick with some strange skin disease - now realism has become an option. Well, perhaps an idealistic realism - I think I'll do a self portrait with the "Tan" marker . . .