Manga Cartoon Portrait event log

Thank you to all the parents and kids that came by and stopped at the Manga Cartoon Portraits tent for their custom drawings! The rain stayed away and had a pleasant afternoon drawing 58 live cartoon portraits (even managed to document a few with photos) from 12:00 pm to 3:30 pm at the Cary Police Department Project Phoenix event in Wrenn Drive last Saturday. 55 drawing requests were from children and teens, and the remaining 3 were from adult guests. Most popular fantasy themes were princesses and mermaids for the girls. Most boys asked to be drawn as ninjas, archers, or soccer players. While younger kids favored fantasy themes, older kids and teen guests tended to favor fairly straightforward cartoon abstraction ("Draw me just the way I am"). Given the popularity of superheroes, there was a request for an original superhero, Iron Man, and Super Girl drawings. Original requests that stuck in my mind:
- Hippogriff rider (Think Harry Potter)
- Draw me with a Lion.
- Draw me with Wolves.
Since we were located on the far end of the venue, we had a bit of a slow start but the line grew in no time and my average speed for the day was 16.5 souvenir speed sketches per hour.

Notes for future events:
- Do not forget bug repellent for outdoor events.
- Duct tape was useful for affixing signs and portrait samples to the table.
- Setting the back of my chair towards the waiting line and using an easel would improve visibility of the drawing process for the audience. I went with a minimalist approach and relied on clipboards for this event.
- Chosen support was 8.5" X 11" card stock. Finished drawings were protected with a ledger size paper sleeve featuring a mermaid on one side and a dragon on the other.

Spent a fun evening at the Cary Arts Center Family Friday Open House

Just got back from the Cary Arts Center Open House. It was a fun evening drawing about 60 manga-style cartoon portraits in 4 hours for guests and volunteers. That means I managed to speed sketch 15 caricatures/hour, so I am pretty pleased to have beaten my average speed of 12 caricatures/hour. Though gotta admit that my left hand feels a tad numb as I type this post. I need to remember to take a few breaks every hour in future events. My brother managed to take a few photos of the evening, so I uploaded them to Flickr: photo 1, photo 2, and photo 3.

The bulk of the requests were ninja, mermaid, fairy, dragon rider, and cute animal sidekicks. A few guests even managed to go through the line 2 or 3 times to get additional cartoon versions of themselves drawn. Thanks to all the kids and parents that stopped by the sketching table, and hope you find some inspiration from your souvenir portraits and start or continue to develop your own sketching skills. With the general positive reception to this Manga-Style Cartoon Sketching event, I believe we'll be able to quickly fill upcoming drawing classes for kids and teens in the Cary area.

Turtle Craft Table for Conservancy Event at Waterside Shops and Upcoming Family Day event

Thanks for stopping by! We had a few families with children participating in the turtle tambourine craft and then meet a real life Red-Eared Slider Turtle at the Conservancy table next to us. While the children colored their paper turtle shells with markers, I was able to do a bit of speed sketching and complete a manga-style cartoon portrait for most of them: an elf, mermaids, fairies, knights, and a couple of dragons covered the range of requested themes. We also handed out free Naples Art Association (NAA) cookbooks, Artscool lunch bags, and some trading cards and coloring sheets used in my manga cartooning classes.
My next scheduled public event will be at the Nuts About The von Liebig on Saturday February 6th from noon to 4:00 pm. I will be doing some quick souvenir sketches and some cartoon portraits for the attending children. We'll also have some manga sketching worksheets and trading card coloring sheets for the kids that want to dive right in and start doing some cartoon drawings of their own.

Cartoon Sketching at Children's Museum Birthday Party - Photo Journal

Did some cartoon sketching for the double birthday party at the Miami Children's Museum this past Saturday. Turned out be be a great choice of venue especially since it was a rather rainy day, and the staff did such a great job setting up and decorating the reserved classrooms for the event. Any gig where you do not have to worry about battling the elements is off to a great start.
I did not know we were going to have such a large dry erase board available at the party venue, but luckily I had one of my black Expo markers in my rolling case (leftover from my after-school manga classes). Thus I quickly doodled a few more cartoon samples on it as a demonstration of my sketching speed.
Ta-da!
A few colored samples and the two blank templates available were shown on my side easel.
Birthday girl Nicole and a friend stopped by for the first time at the cartooning corner once we finished setting up.The little guests starting looking over the pictures in display to figure out what to ask for in their own souvenir party sketches.
The very first drawing request of the afternoon was for a forest ranger from the single sketchbook that I brought along to the party.
Once we got started, there was a steady line of guests watching and enjoying the creation of several cartoon sketches while patiently waiting and deciding their own drawing requests.
Not surprisingly, most girls wanted to be drawn wearing mermaid tails or butterfly wings in their cartoon versions.
Several boys in a row wanted to be drawn as the "Caped Crusader: Batman" which luckily happens to be a favorite childhood hero of mine.
Nicole managed to stopped by for a second visit to the Cartooning Corner as the other birthday activities started winding down.
Most boys requested the always popular themes of superheroes or dragon sketches, but Mikey (tallest kid in the crowd) surprised me by asking just for a drawing of himself without the extra fantasy elements. Thus I went with a fairly straight cartoon portrait approach. Unfortunately my helper did not manage to document the finished drawings given the deluge of requests towards the end of the party and the fact that we had to pack up in a bit of a hurry. It was a lot of fun, and I estimate we managed to complete 20-25 sketches in the second half of the party.