Local shopping tip and sample field sketching kit

Time to check out your local Office Depot stores' clearance sections for some treasures. Some recent additions include assorted packs of index cards and holders that work quite well as portable sketching kits: take a handful of cards along with a pencil, and you can sketch anywhere without spending much in the materials used for your practice doodles and quick studies.
"500 blank cards for 83 cents" is a great deal that sure beats a small Moleskine sketchbook for ten bucks anyday. The Pentel Outline green/silver marker pen, refillable Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph 0.25 mm technical pen, and Staedtler Mars 0.25 & 0.3 mm technical pen refills were reduced to under 50 cents each (which is about 90% in savings from their retail prices).
Found this neat sketching bag (originally a German map case) in a recent trip to an Army Surplus store, proving that suitable art supplies can sometimes be found in the unlikeliest of places with just a little ingenuity. Its front pockets can hold a few wooden pencils, ruler, and sharpener while the two interior large compartments comfortably hold a Handbook 5" X 8" sketchbook and a tin of Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watersoluble crayons with a couple of waterbrushes. This light and compact set up could easily be taken along on field sketching trips and sketchcrawls.

Initial Session with the Mustangs group at the Boys & Girls Club

The students today really impressed me with their talent and enthusiasm.

Some of the drawings done by the Boys and Girls Club Mustangs group during the character design part of their first Manga Cartooning lesson using some index cards sketches that were provided as reference and some blank sketchboard templates for support.
Thus for their second session, I have prepared a series of Faber Castell Pitt Artist brush pen quick 3-minutes illustrations (about 19 reference doodles drawn in an hour at the food court while waiting for my color ink printer cartridge to get refilled) as examples of some of my sketching symbols from memory.

The students could use them as references to copy when they get stuck for inspiration. I suspect they might make also suitable coloring sheets.

Doodling in the waiting room at the auto shop

Always carry some art supplies with you! Had I not done so I would've wasted about an hour waiting for an oil change. With my Creative Mark 5.6 mm lead holder loaded with a sharp 4B graphite lead, I managed to fill about 9 sheets of card stock with doodles practicing my sketching symbols for a variety of cartoon subjects. Since I did not stop to sharpen the lead, lines grew increasingly thicker on the latter sketches.

Sharpie Pen and Crayola crayons: a couple of inexpensive sketching supplies available locally

Some of the discounted supplies found on recent trips to Office Depot: large 11" x 14" Mead sketchbooks and oversize 14" x 17" Foray Marker pads for $3 each that I plan to use for in-class drawing demonstrations. They will come in handy when the limited range of expression of dry erase markers becomes an obstacle to the clear exposition of drawing tips and techniques.
It had been a while since I actually tried using Crayola crayons for anything, but decided to test a box of 24 crayons on the Mead sketchbook paper as a potential inexpensive coloring tool for the cartooning classes. While the colors appearance on the paper is nowhere near as saturated as that of the Caran D'Ache Neocolor I wax crayons, I have to admit that for 30 cents this compact set is a pretty good value for the quick-sketching of early rough color studies.
Comparing the line quality and writing performance of several pigment liner pens of similar nib size (around 0.3 mm in diameter) on Foray marker paper, no significant difference was apparent at first glance. Unlike most of the specialized pigment liners shown, the Sharpie Pen is a fairly common find at local retailers and office supplies stores while costing the least of this bunch.
While marketed primarily as a precision writing tool, I find the Sharpie Pen quite suitable for doodling with ink. The nib feels strong and glides smoothly on both marker paper and regular copy paper leaving dark uniform lines with no bleed through. Despite some online reviews warning of poor durability (mainly paint chipping off the barrel and loosening up of the plastic cap after posting it on the back of the pen), the Sharpie Pen seems promising as a sketching tool given its initial performance and recently lowered price (found the 2-pack for $2.50 at a local Walmart Supercenter store). I just plan to either use it at home or carry it securely in pencil cases that would prevent rubbing against other tools that might cause the dreaded paint chipping. When posting the cap on the back of the pen while in-use, avoid using excessive force and do not push the soft plastic cap all the way down to prevent it from getting loose prematurely.

Some photo reference material and templates for the Manga Cartooning class at the Boys & Girls Club (B&GC)

Normal straight on reference shot of Final Fnantasy VII Adevent Children Tifa Lockhart.
Worm's eye view of Final Fantasy VII Yuffie Kisaragi: reference shot was taken from a low angle.
Bird's eye view: reference shot was taken from above.
Just a few reference shots using these articulated Final Fantasy figures as art makinins.



Just a few 8.5" x 11" templates with digitally applied B&GC Art Lab backgrounds that can printed and used for thumbnail planning of a manga story set in a classroom.

Just another practice sketching session

Remember kids keep on drawing as often as you can! Just some practice doodles with my 2 mm leadholders loaded with my preferred Uni leads to set an example.


Using a black gel pen to doodle some manikins as warm up exercises for sketching directly with ink pens.
Doodled these few faces with a brand new Pitt brush pen.
The main thing I was reminded on this sketching session was that of the rather short useful life of the sharp point of the brush nib of a Faber Castell Pitt Artist brush pen. After sketching just these two sheets with a light touch, the tip of the brush nib had already started to show signs of wear getting a little blunt. No need to use the nib flipping trick just yet, but I just wish the Pitt nib would held its original shape a bit longer.

New art manikin and pencil sketching at the mall to gather ideas for Shojo manga characters

On a recent trip tot he mall found this nice action figure of Final Fantasy VII Yuffie Kisaragi of the Kotobukiya Play Arts Series (click on this link to check out additional reference photos taken of this figure and Tifa Lochart from Final Fantasy Advent Children).

While Tifa's range of movement is limited by her hairstyle and skirt, Yuffie's uncluttered design is far more poseable and enhanced with the inclusion of a nice giant shuriken (ninja throwing star) reminiscent of Naruto's gear.


The Yuffie Kisaragi poseable figure makes for a useful art manikin given her sturdy construction and multiple articulation which allows her to stand in a variety of dynamic poses including upside down (as in mid-summersault- an impossible feat for your standard wooden manikin). Her delicate features and fit body type (testament to Tetsuya Nomura's enduring character design) are the archetype of your average Japanese ninja girl (well the "ninja" factor is more of a bonus for action-oriented storylines) making her a perfect reference tool for Manga sketching.
Having an hour left to wait at the mall, I decided to use the time to do some sketching to practice with my 2 mm leadholders loaded with HB & B leads on loose card stock sheets held on my new clipboard.
Gradually switching from my default Shonen (manga for boys) mindset, to drafting some teaching materials illustrating the differences in age and gender with basic manikin construction.
To get mentally prepared to focus more on the Shojo genre (Manga for girls) for next week's summer art classes at the Boys & Girls Club, I decided to start sketching some faces and making observations of the mall shoppers in a style that might suit Shojo stories.



While the majority of the main characters populating Shojo Manga stories might be young girls, some story lines might also call for a few older characters. Thus, I tried to incorporate a few adult features on the body type sketched on the left by observing the shoppers at the mall.
Making a few observation of people sitting around the mall central court and taking note of how sports bag look worn on the back.
A few more sketches inspired by people passing by.
The upper left face was inspired by a fashion signed spotted while strolling through a department store and sketching on my clipboard folder.