The image above is composed entirely of individually placed crayon heads.A It was created (and is linked from the homepage of) artist Christian Faur, who experiments with crayons amongst other mediums.

You may wonder how, it’s possible, but allow me to postulate that there are so many different colors of Crayolas alone, whose current box includes about 19 shades of brown, that you could like faithfully reproduce The Potato Eaters.

Some colors — Green Blue, Maize, Lemon Yellow, Raw Umber — didn’t last and were retired. But more — Razzle Dazzle Rose, Unmellow Yellow, Mango Tango, Neon Carrot, Electric Lime — have been added. So if you do the math (and the ever-so-geeky Velo did) we have what is called Crayola’s Law, which states:

The number of Crayola colors doubles every 28 years.

By that logic, (a multiplication rate of 2.56 percent a year) by 2050, your toddlers will be presented with a Crayola box the size of a blimp, containing 330 crayons. And when they want yellow, they will need a half-hour (or a Valium) to figure out which yellow.

What you see above is a visual representation of Crayola color changes over the years, starting with the original 8.A You know we follow Krulwich on this site, c’mon son.A Check out the original article from NPR.A Also, if you’re bored (or interested) go check out this page for even more crayon geekery.