Never too early to start drawing with leadholders and fine sketching tools

Mateo, my 2-year old nephew, trying out my trusty 3.15 mm Worther Shorty leadholder.
Worther Shorty + Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook = one efficient sketching kit. Even for toddlers!
Should I draw with my right hand?
Hmm, or is it better when using my left hand?
Trying out my travel set of Uni watercolor pencils.
Right-handed?
Or lefty? Time will tell.
Trying out a 0.7 mm Pentel Graph Gear mechanical pencil on a pocket Moleskine sketchbook.
Figuring it out how the 3.15 mm graphite lead loads into the Worther Shorty leadholder. I find that with close supervision, most of my young nephews and nieces can safely enjoy the opportunity of trying out artist grade and grown-up sketching tools.

Crayola Watercolor Pencils Review

Since I got a couple class packs for upcoming Family Art Night activities, decided to do a quick review of the Crayola watercolor pencils. While I have not found any local brick-and-mortar retailer that carries them, they are fairly easy to find online. They are a good introduction to the advantages and range of techniques possible with watercolor pencils with a minimal investment. Watercolor pencils often feature a brush design on their barrels to highlight the water soluble nature of their leads.
Colored chart on Canson 90lb (185 gsm) watercolor paper displaying the expressive range of the set of 12 Crayola watercolor pencils: the left side of each color swatch was left dry, the middle shows how much brighter each color looks when wet, and the right side consists of the transparent color wash produced by dragging a loaded waterbrush on to the uncolored paper.
Dry sample illustration colored on white card stock with the watercolor pencils.
A large Kuretake Niji waterbrush was handy for smoothing out selected areas of dry watercolor pencil.
These Crayola watercolor pencils are versatile fun coloring tools that can be used dry and wet. They allow the precise control of regular colored pencils when sketching and drawing with them, and their dry marks readily dissolve into smooth delicate transparent color washes with the aid of a water loaded sable brush or a waterbrush. Worth trying for a creative change in your kids' art time or classroom.

Party for the Planet at Caribbean Gardens Naples Zoo Photo Journal

I was at the Naples Zoo from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm speed sketching cartoon portraits to entertain the families participating in the Party for the Planet event.
We managed to distribute tons of ARTScool lunch boxes and registration brochures promoting the summer art classes at The von Liebig Art Center.
Originally the concept had been to create an entire "Zoo Town" out of the salvaged cardboard boxes.
Yet the lack of an adequate source of clean water did not really make it feasible to work effectively with paint and brushes at this venue. The closest restroom was like a city block away making clean up of paint rather challenging for family groups. A quick peek at the single available water bucket stained with green algae, convinced us to put the paints away and keep only the markers and dry media on hand.
Given the heat and the enticing animal attractions, none of the kids took up the task of building their own "Zoo Town" block anyway. Thus this demo tower remained lonely throughout the day. Most kids simply took their coloring sheets to use at home while a few colored their favorite animals while waiting in line to get their portrait drawn.
Spent most of the afternoon speed sketching a bunch of cartoon portraits: a baby on his first birthday, couple of cat kids, fairies with butterfly wings, a few dragon riders, couple of lions and elephant riders, sports players and cheerleader, and several conventional portraits. Both kids and parents seemed very pleased with their pictures (Note to self: still need to research availability of letter size sleeves that could be used to protect finished drawings in future events).
Many of the cartoon portraits had to be drawn from kids wearing face paint expertly applied by another exhibitor in the Waste Management booth I think (I was not really able to walk around the other exhibitors' displays once I got started drawing). Some kids wanted to be portrayed with their recently acquired feline or Avatar features, and for the rest I had to extrapolate their likeness by removing the paint applications in my head. It was quite a bit of fun, but I forgot to have a photo taken of myself drawing, so if you have one that you could e-mail me to add to this post it would be much appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.

Dragons, Robots, Mermaids, and Knights coloring cards

Just assembled these two Manga-style trading cards coloring sheets for the older students at an upcoming Family Night Event at the Immokalee Charter School.With Clash of the Titans in movie theaters, Greek mythology was fresh in my mind so the Gorgon and Mermaid take up half of this manga-style trading cards sheet meant for the girls.
Inspired a tad by Bakugan (particularly the robot on the upper right corner), came up with this manga style cards for the boys.
Finished sample colored with watersoluble pencils: Derwent Watercolour and Graphitint. Already ordered some Crayola watercolor pencils and brushes to complement our supply of washable markers for the Art Night event. We plan to have these multiple coloring cards sheets and letter-size sketching sheets featuring cartoon style illustrations popular with the students. These sketching sheets have some empty space around a single character, so students can add their own backgrounds or additional characters. For the younger students, we'll also have a supply of the Standing Character Templates that were already successfully used for a Family Art Night event at a pre-school a couple of weeks ago.Table set up at the event. Couple of cartoon portraits drawn while the students colored their activity sheets.

Faber Castell Watercolor Crayons Set of 15 Review

The Faber Castell Red Line consists of several art supply products designed for children which oddly do not seem to have widespread distribution at retail in the USA despite their bright saturated colors and fun performance. From the Faber Castell Malaysia website: "Red Line" from Faber-Castell. A continuously growing painting and creative expression programme for children from 3 to 12. While I have spotted them in the stationery aisles of grocery stores across the globe in Beijing and Lima, I was saddened when they were removed from Target stores and the Miami Pearl store no longer seems to carry the line. Thus I was quite pleased to discover this set of 15 Faber Castell Watercolor Crayons in the Children Art Supplies section of a local Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft store. In fact they had quite a fairly wide selection of Red Line offerings and Creativity for Kids products. This set contains 15 paper wrap crayons along with a large round brush. The paper wrapping is scored at regular intervals to facilitate its neat removal as the crayon gets shorter with use (a feature that I had only noticed before in the Caran D'Ache Neocolor crayons)
The back of the packaging box displays the color palette range and highlights the main features of these kids' crayons manufactured in Korea: triangular shape for better control, crayon made of watercolor paint, washable, more pigment for richer colors, and no waxy build-up. As part of the Faber Castell Red Line, they are naturally non-toxic and suitable for children ages 3+. While I quickly stained my fingers making the reference chart below, the color stains washed right off with water and soap in no time.
This reference color chart shows the saturated opaque color swatches that can be laid down with the dry crayons. The crayons are on the soft side, so my regular drawing hand pressure ended up breaking the tip of the blue crayon.
Reference color chart after partially dissolving the color swatches with a flat waterbrush.
To reduce the chance of breakage and limit the color transfer to my fingers, I was quite pleased to discover that these triangular crayons fit in my Intus 10 pastel holder which help keep the crayons from melting in my hand. With the consistency of oil pastels, these creamy crayons glide effortlessly on the paper and allow for fairly quick coverage.
Finished colored illustration after blending and smoothing the dry layers of crayon marks with a small round brush. The free brush included in the set is a tad large and tends to deliver too much water at once when working on smaller details, but it is pretty useful for covering larger areas quickly. This set of Faber Castell watercolor crayons bundled with a nice waterbrush would make for a pretty fun and original gift for the young budding artist in your list. Recommended.

Zoo Town Craft Activity Preview for Upcoming Event: Party for the Planet 2010 at Naples Zoo Caribbean Gardens

I will be at the Naples Zoo Caribbean Gardens on Saturday April 24, 2010 from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm promoting ARTScool at the Party for the Planet 2010.
Sample Zoo Town building block. We are going to have a selection of salvaged cardboard boxes along with several art supplies (paints, brushes, markers, construction paper, and glue), so that the kids can use their creativity to draw, color, paint, cut and paste according to their skill levels and build their own corner of Zoo Town. We'll also have a selection of coloring outlines of a few zoo animals on hand to help populate our cardboard Zoo Town.


Examples of animal cut outs colored with Prismacolor Double Ended markers.
Blank bear coloring outline.
Dry watercolor pencil stage.
Quick and easy "painted look" after the dry watercolor pencil marks were blended with a waterbrush.
Blank giraffe coloring outline.
Giraffe outline colored with Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils dry stage.

Blending the dry watercolor pencil marks with a wet brush.

Demo video of quick cartoon sketch. While the kids are working on their individual Zoo Town boxes, I will attempt to complete as many souvenir cartoon portrait sketches as possible depending on the flow of participants in the art activities. Best plan to arrive early to improve the chances of getting your drawing requests done ;).

Canson Fanboy Create Your Own Comic Book Kit Review

Found this Canson Fanboy Create Your Own Comic Book Kit on clearance at a local Michael's at 50% off its suggested retail price. It is a good introductory sampler of the Fanboy paper range that includes: 10 Comic Book Art Boards (11" X 17", 250 gsm heavyweight drawing paper), 2 Comic Book Cover sheets (11" X 17", 250 gsm heavyweight drawing paper), 2 Concept Sketch Pages (8½" × 11" , 260 gsm Bristol), and 4 Comic Book Layout Pages (8½" × 11" , 74 gsm lightweight sketch paper). They feature good erasability and are designed to accept well the typical tools required for creating comic books: graphite pencils, ink pens, and alcohol markers. The kit also features some simple instructions that would provide an adequate starting point to beginner students working by themselves. The Fanboy 150 lb (250 gsm) drawing paper is also available in bulk packs that are quite convenient for classroom use.
This kit also includes a box of the previously reviewed Canson Fanboy Comic & Manga Trading Cards. The 20 cards along with their protective sleeves can be readily turned into collectible cards with the aid of pencils, pens, and markers. Colors show quite brightly on this heavily-sized specialty paper.The included Sakura Micron Pens offer a nice range of line widths for gradually building your illustrations from thin to thick (0.25 mm to 0.45 mm). Since their pigmented ink is waterproof and fadeproof once dry their outlines can be easily colored with markers or even watercolors.
The Sakura Micron Pens have fairly wide distribution, so finding replacement pens would not pose a problem.
If you can find this Canson Fanboy kit at the usual discounted online prices or on sale at a brick-and-mortar store, it would make for a nice present for a budding artist interested in creating comic books. The selection of Fanboy art papers provides early exposure to possible working layouts to use in developing conceptual art, planning the sequence of panels on a comic book page, and drawing the actual comic pages on the same large format (11" X 17" art boards) used by professional creators.
Savings Tip: For even a more cost-effective comic-size drawing board alternative, you could tape together two sheets of letter size (8½" × 11") card stock. A pack of 150 sheets of 110 lb Georgia Pacific card stock from a big box retailer would yield 75 practice comic book art boards for just 5 bucks plus the cost of some invisible tape.