Some Lecture notes for my upcoming Manga Cartooning Class

Used a Pentel EnerGel® Deluxe Retractable 0.7mm metal tip liquid gel roller pen on Georgia Pacific white card stock to sketch this batch of note pages for my cartooning class.Warm-up doodle page example: drawing simple geometric shapes like the circle, square, and triangle. Then drawing how they might look stretched, squashed, or placed at an angle to the viewer. Then drawing how they might look in space when blown into 3-dimensional objects like spheres, boxes, and pyramid shapes.
To improve your manual dexterity and confidence in your doodling skills, sometimes it is easier to start constructing random robots with basic geometric shapes like boxes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. There are no rules on how a robot should look, so it takes the pressure of "drawing them right" from the get go. Just string together a few building blocks to create your own robots resembling people or other robot types from cartoons and movies.
We all start doodling different symbols for the human depending on the development of our ability "to see", degree of eye-hand coordination, and how much effort we put into improving our drawing skills. If you already like to draw, do so as often as you can. Periodically ask yourself what parts of your drawing do you need to change or adjust to improve their accuracy or increase the effectiveness of your visual communication skills.
Different styles of stick figures and basic manikin sketches to lay the groundwork for the creation of human characters.
Doodling a few potential hair styles for female characters.
Constructing and drawing faces.
Using basic geometric shapes and numbers to construct different fantasy creatures from scratch.
Designing your own rangers - trying out different helmet and armor designs for a "sentai" (Power Ranger-style) character.
Possible inspiration material and basic visual symbols to create fantasy creatures and monsters by combining them or changing their natural scale.
Drawing inspiration from nature to construct fantasy creatures and give them a greater sense of believability.
Examples of setting the mood in different types of environment by using your own visual symbols and special effect lines.
Sample comic book page layout in a landscape format.

Drawing "Secrets": a few Shonen Manga drawing tips for my bulletin board

Came up with a few tips and sketching sample sheets for my bulletin board at the Boys & Girls Club.
Tip sheet on creating Sentai rangers and Kaiju monsters.
An example of a "Super Sentai" team of 3 rangers with their animal totems hovering above them.
A few approaches to creating "Crazy Critters" (think of them as potential monster creatures for boys' stories or magical guardian creatures for girls' stories) : (I) Combine different animal traits into a single creature to form a chimera-type critter, (II) combine a human, an animal, imaginary creature with elemental forces (fire, ice, lightning, wind, lava, etc.) for more powerful critters, & (III) combine a human body with different animal parts to create fantastic critters like the ones often described in Greek and Egyptian mythologies (mermaids, centaurs, harpies, gorgons, and severeal beast-headed deities like Anubis and Horus). In fact a potential interesting creative challenge, would be to come up with your own interpretations of classical myths like technologically enhanced futuristic versions of the Twelve Olympians (Greek Pantheon).
An "S" shape is a good starting point for sketching a basic dragon body.

Weekend Art Camp for my nieces

Camila with her new box of 28 Elmer's 3D Washable Paint Pens. When planning and organizing art activities for kids keep in mind the space available, number of kids, and make sure to secure non-toxic art supplies.
Nicole sitting at my drafting table happy as can be with a fresh supply of drawing and coloring tools for the weekend. With close supervision, children can be allowed to explore their creativity with safe artist grade materials.
Putting the finishing touches on her first sparkling glue picture.
Sunny day sketch.
The sparkling color glues dry leaving a raised relief effect.
Drawing with sparkling glue pens sure is fun. Just keep a wet towel handy for spot clean up in case of spills.
Almost done!
Camila drawing with Derwent Coloursoft pencils.
Finished "Fairy Garden".
Developing her own teaching plan for her "Math, Bones, and Crazy Critters" class.
Examples of "Crazy Critters" would be the Indonesian winged frog decorating a wall or a mermaid like the one drawn above.
"Studying" closely a couple of G.I. Joe plastic ninjas and Schleich horses that I keep handy for quick visual reference.
Working on a surprise comic book story in her blank Canson Manga mini comicbook.
Manikin sketch done with Tombow Dual brush pen markers.

Nicole's character designs drawn with markers and colored with Derwent Coloursoft pencils.

Bit of watercolor doodling

Another use for 3X5 index cards: quick watercolor doodles drawn with a waterbrush and some watercolor pans.
Just for fun decided to color this page of graphite doodles with a few washes of Faber Castell Albrecht Durer aquarelle sticks using a handy medium Niji waterbrush.

Tons of sketching practice for under a buck - keep on drawing grasshoppers!

With a handful of 4" X 6" index cards and any pen or pencil, you can make the most of any idle time and get tons of doodling and sketching practice. These sample sketch cards were done at a Books-a-Million bookstore and a Target food court. Occasionally you can draw inspiration from people passing by, and make observation sketches and quick notes of the subtle differences among the many facial and body types in existence. The beauty of this particular format is that you can crank out many practice doodles in a short time uninhibited by the inexpensive nature of the support, for the packs of 100 blank index cards tend to retail for under a dollar at most places and each card doodle can be completed in a few minutes. Remember the big secret to drawing better: "the more you practice, the faster your drawing skills will improve".

Maped Tip Top Pencil sharpener + Eraser review

Browsing through the Target Back-to-School supplies section, I spotted these neat pencil accessories for $1.19: the Maped Tip Top cap pencil sharpener and pencil cap eraser set. They strike me as a value alternative to the Faber Castell Perfect Pencil without the extender function. They were available in several bright colors, but I naturally picked the yellow orange one to match my Maped Zenoa eraser.
When attached to the back of the pencils, the cap sharpener and cap eraser allow the pencils to be clipped to a sheet of paper. Can't imagine this to be a particular useful function, but thought to mention it since this feature is highlighted on the back of the packaging card.
Both accessories fit nicely as pencil toppers on the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni and Mitsubishi Unistar pencils.
Time to test the effectiveness of the cap eraser on this HB graphite doodle.
The cap eraser works quite nicely though it tends to get soiled fairly easily as shown by the graphite smudges on its side.
Tested the new sharpener blade sharpening a few Caran D'Ache Pablo colored pencils and a couple of graphite pencils.
The cap sharpener yields some nice sharp pencil points and can effectively double as a point protector.
I am pretty happy with the initial performance of these inexpensive pencil accessories and have made a place for both of them in my premium graphite pencils case.