Succesful Open House at Jo-Ann store completed

Thanks for stopping by at the Jo-Ann's Open House, I enjoyed meeting so many potential students for the summer camp and sketching cartoon portraits for quite a few as a preview of our beginner's cartooning drawing and pop-up card classes.
Suggested materials to start practicing:
- Sakura Pigma Sensei drawing kit
- Canson Fanboy manga papers
- Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens Manga sets
- Prismacolor Double ended markers sets (Manga and Grays)
- 2 mm leadholder with B-2B leads
- sketchbooks/copy paper

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.

Example of an intermediate Manga color drawing kit

All of the drawing and color pens shown glide smoothly and show nicely on both the Canson Fanboy Manga 150 lb drawing paper and the Aquabee Bee Paper Pen Sketcher's 70 lb paper. The Pentel Color Pen fine point markers feature sturdy plastic tips that make them suitable for creating detailed colored line drawings as well as roughly coloring black and white drawings.
The Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens lay down nice flat areas of color with the side of the brush nibs, and the greys (Cool Grey III & Warm Grey III) come in handy to gently modify the appearance of the Light Flesh #132 chosen as the basic skin color. Since the Pitt pens are waterproof once dried, they can be safely colored with the Pentel markers without smudging.
Always a good idea to create a reference chart of the marks that can be drawn with your chosen tools on the paper support on which you actually intend to use them. It is a fun process that also familiarizes you with the handling and feel of your pens on your working surface. In general it is better to pick smoother papers to reduce undue wear on your pens' plastic and felt nibs.