Mini Card Making Workshop

For a creative warm-up, the girls started some coloring pages using my trusty set of Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils.
Coloring with Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens.
Painting with watercolors for a bit. Forgot to bring my waterbrushes, so we were limited to using conventional watercolor brushes from my back-up supplies. The girls had a harder time regulating the amount of water to use, and keeping things neat was far more challenging. The pot full of rinsing water ended up on the floor, some yellow ochre rinse water splashed on the fabric cover of a kitchen chair, and the actual paintings were loaded with excess water taking longer to dry. Tip for parents and teachers: to encourage frequent practice and development of watercolor painting skills in young children, the waterbrushes really help prevent the splashing of colored water in unwanted areas and reduce clean up time.
Watercolor by Nicole. Time to switch to the card-making activity.
Sample illustrations from greeting card workshops for kids with a bit of Manga style.
Sample line art for holiday greeting cards featuring a Daruma doll in Santa garb and a Maneki Neko wearing a X-mas hat.
Making their own stickers with a Xyron 1.5" create-a-sticker gadget.
Using some Pentel Outline markers to write some decorative holiday greeting messages.
Bit of collage by adding some custom made stickers to decorate the card's interior.
Carefully cutting around the right half of the drawn image. Naturally close supervision and a steady hand are required at this delicate stage.
Ta-da! cut-out snowman card.
A handful of cards ready for coloring and decorating after working in the kitchen for about an hour. Time for a break and change of activity:

Another Watercolor Session with the Nieces

Camila can't believe how easily her waterbrush picks up the pigment from the Daniel Smith watercolor stick.
Sketching with the Niji waterbrush.
Mom standing by with the watercolor stick ready to support Camila's painting exploration.
Marissa trying to join in the coloring fun. Adult supervision is particularly important when allowing children to explore their creativity with artist grade art materials.
Coloring with Neocolor II watercolor crayons and Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils on the first page of sample ink doodles in the Exacompta Sketch Book.
Adding some color detail with a Caran D'Ache Museum Fixpencil.
Picking up color straight from the watercolor stick.
Painting with the Niji waterbrush on a Handbook watercolor journal.
Playing with some loose painterly strokes as practice for my upcoming "watercolor painting postcards" demo for the media and tourism representatives at the von Liebig Art Center early next month.
The idea for this watercolor doodle is that an squid-like monster is coming through a inter-dimensional portal (Stargate style).
Combining some painting and loose sketching to achieve different textures with the watercolor sticks. All this fairly abstract watercolor playtime inspired my niece to experiment and create her own piece with the watercolors sticks.
Nicole's abstract creation of a "Multicolored Heart".

A few Sample Warm-up Worksheets for upcoming After-school Manga Cartooning class

Ok guys if you dropped by to get a head start on the material for the After-school Manga Cartooning class, you could try using the following worksheets as a reference for your daily practice doodles which I trust you have been doing all summer. By now, I expect most of you should have used up at least half of the pages from your sketchbooks.Sample doodle sheet drawn with a graphite pencil.
Worksheet with a large selection of facial traits and head shapes that could be used to draw many distinct faces for a basic cast of characters. Let your imagination fly and create a few characters for your next manga project or short story. These last 3 pages were drawn with a 08 Prismacolor Archival marker.
Constructing assorted faces by starting with different types of head shapes. Round faces with thin necks would be suitable for younger characters while square faces with broad necks would better fit older characters with greater physical strength.
Step-by-step head construction sequence with a bit of age progression in the final step. When sketching in a typical manga cartoon style, just a few wrinkle and expression lines can add several years to the character. Youthful characters tend to sport slender necks and pointy chins. To age them to adulthood: try broadening the chin, thinning the hairline, and widening the base of the nose.

Sketching in color with Faber Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist pens

Just having a spot of fun sketching a manga version of Peter Parker unmasked with Faber Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist pens on regular printer paper. The outline was drawn first with the black brush pen, and it dried pretty quickly since it did not smear at all when coloring in the flesh tones with the lighter Pitt pens. In general, I find these Pitt Artist Pens (both the regular and Big Brush formats) to be efficient tools for sketching and coloring manga subjects.This manga Batman was actually drawn with a Prismacolor Archival Illustration brush marker which does smear a bit when colored over with the Pitt Artist brush pens. This second sketch was drawn on white card stock.Kaiju (Japanese Giant Monster) that combines traits from Wolf & Tiger (a bit inspired by some samurai manga and Naruto) drawn with Copic and Prismacolor markers and colored with the Pitt Big Brush Artist pens.

Pentel Handy-line S highlighters review and doodles

Got a handful of Pentel Handy-line S highlighters among the samples I received from the manufacturer a few weeks ago to try and review. Didn't have much reason to use them since I do not mark my books and I haven't had to highlight any photocopies lately. Finally got around playing with them a bit and found them to be quite suitable for some random doodling. Their clever retractable design eliminates the need for pen caps that could be lost. While they are refillable, I have not seen the refills available for sale at any neighborhood retailer (though they can be found online after some Googling). In my eagerness to check how they could be refilled, I unscrewed the refill on the orange highlighter by turning the push button counterclockwise until the whole fluorescent ink refill separated from the nib and could be removed through the top of the highlighter. Perhaps I did not reinsert it back in place correctly, for the ink flow did not return to normal yielding streaky marks. I removed it again and flipped the refill hoping that it would make better contact with the nib, but the improvement in the flow of fluorescent orange ink was marginal at best. Thus the lesson would be not to tinker with the refill mechanism unless you really need to replace an empty refill.
While probably not their intended use, these highlighters worked pretty nicely for some spontaneous doodling combined with a medium Pentel RSVP ballpoint pen line work. The colors show quite brightly on the white card stock as seen in the digital photographs above. When doodling just for fun, they could also be used for drawing laser blasts and light sabers. Keep in mind that fluorescent inks generally do not scan well, so you might not want to use them for illustrations that you plan to reproduce later. The scanner could not pick up the yellow and orange marks of the test doodles.
I think some of my students will enjoy these samples for drawing and marking their study materials when I give them away as prizes during our upcoming cartooning class mini contests.

Good time to shop for bargains on School Art Supplies

Now that the school year is well on its way, most big box retailers have begun discounting the remaining stock in their Back-to-School supplies sections as the stores are rearranged for the next seasonal shopping event. Many quality supplies can be had with various discounts ranging from 30-90% off. Most of the stuff shown above was a buck or less each.
Found this neat Brazilian 24 colored pencils with sharpener set just for 50 cents + tax in the East coast. According to the manufacturer's website, these pencils are manufactured with reforested wood from their own managed plantations keeping in mind the protection of the local flora and fauna.
Can't help finding it a bit odd to discover a Faber Castell pencil set at an American big box retailer with all the descriptive text printed just in Spanish and Portuguese.
24 nicely colored coded long pencils with gold lettering plus a sharpener for under a buck was a pretty good deal if I ever saw one.
These pencil sets would make pretty good stocking stuffers, birthday party favors, or Halloween giveaways for those with storage room to spare.
The color chart shows that this school pencil set can produce some fairly bright color swatches. I wouldn't bet on their longevity and lightfastness, but they feel quite smooth on the paper and would provide adequate performance for a spot of coloring fun for any kid artist.

Watercolor Postcard Activity at The von Liebig Art Center

Handmade watercolor palettes were created by doodling with Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watercolor crayons on scraps of rough-surfaced paper. The color swatches dissolve easily with a water-loaded brush yielding brightly colored semi-opaque saturated washes. Without making much of a dent on a custom set of 18 watercolor crayons, 50 compact watercolor palettes were created to extend the expressive range of regular Crayola watercolor pan sets (it only took about 3 hours and 2 people scribbling away with the crayons).
Soaking up inspiration: group of Manatee Middle School students touring Kathy Spalding's 120 foot watercolor Rookery Bay Continuum and bronze sculptures exhibition at The von Liebig Art Center.


Attentively listening to the introduction by the Naples Art Center's Director of Education, Nicole DuPont Strub.
Classroom set up for watercolor postcard image transfer and coloring activity for 25-30 students: each student was provided with a turtle template, blank postcard, paper watercolor palette, pencil, brush, paper towel, and 2 cups of water. 15 Crayola 8-color watercolor pan sets were pre-moistened with a water mister and set on the middle of the tables for the students to share. Staedtler drafting dots were also provided to secure the template/transfer paper to the watercolor postcard.
Students learned how to transfer the outline of a turtle without a lightbox by making their own carbon transfer paper on the back of the coloring outline with a soft pencil and transferring the image to a blank postcard.

Everybody was quite eager to start the watercolor painting phase of the activity. After a quick coloring demonstration some students went with a more realistic coloring approach while others let their imaginations fly and picked more whimsical color choices to paint their postcards.


School group teacher and Art Center docent supporting the students' learning process.
The entire group was very disciplined and focused in their paintings.
Even had a few minutes left to complete a few manga cartoon portraits for a handful of students that finished painting their postcards.