Pop-Up Castle Templates and Samples

Print castle template on 8.5" X 11" card stock and fold in halves twice, so that the castle wall pattern ends up inside the folded card. With sharp scissors cut one or two pop-up tabs to add additional decorative elements or standing characters to your castle diorama.
Selection of characters and decorative elements for coloring, cutting, and pasting to your castle backgrounds. I would recommend using colored pencils or fine point markers for coloring such small elements. I used doubled side Scotch tape for ease of use and clean handling, but a glue stick or glue bottle might provide a stronger bond so long as you are careful.
Sample pop-up castle cards. Here is the front view of the same grouping. This is the top view and the 3/4 view of the most heavily decorated castle. This is the close up view of the Dragon and Knight castle. And finally a castle inspired by Harry Potter.Put together this finished sample with some Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils and some double sided tape. Crayola fine tip markers are also a good choice for coloring the character cut outs.

Caricature Stand at 2nd annual Mercato Fine Arts Festival - Day 2 Photo Journal

Despite a bit of rain early in the morning and a rather windy start that lead to me stow away the sun umbrella under the table, we enjoyed a fairly nice day on the second day of the Art Festival. Had a pretty good spot between the live music station and the Copper & Hand Blown Glass tent of sculptor John Zidek who also proved to be quite an entertaining neighboor.
Hmm maybe I should reconsider my equipment set up, but it was a good opportunity to test the performance of a wide variety of coloring tools for creating live caricatures. Even remembered to document my favorite colored caricatures with a digital camera.
Again relied on my trusty Sakura Pigma Sensei 0.6 mm and 1.0 mm manga drawing pens to draw all the cartoon portraits of the day.
Colored with Faber Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist pens and Prismacolor Double-Ended Art markers.
Since the selection of markers on hand did not include lighter hues of pink, the Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils came quite handy in laying down subtler tones with more interesting texture. Happy Birthday Bishop!
The cartoon portrait of these siblings should make nice gift for their grandma. My thanks to all the guests that stopped by to get drawn or just say hi.

Holiday Guide Addendum

As we get down to the wire with the holiday gift season, here is a short list for suitable gift suggestions for budding artists that might enjoy some quality watercolor sets:

1. Faber Castell Albrecht Durer Watercolor Pencils set of 12 would be a good start.
2. Caran D'Ache Supracolor II set of 18 watercolor pencils another nice option.
3. Caran D'Ache Neocolor II set or 10 or 15 watercolor crayons. A personal favorite which I carry everywhere.
4. Holbein Artists' watercolors set of twelve 5 ml tubes.
5. Winsor & Newton Artists' watercolor half pans gift set. A classic choice.
6. Daniel Smith Watercolor Sticks - a couple would make a neat stocking stuffer.

Ooops forgot to mention a couple of tools to use with these sets:
Pentel Aquash or Kuretake Niji waterbrushes - make an ideal bundle with the watercolor pencils and watercolor half pan sets.
For traditional round Kolinsky sable brushes, I would suggest researching if the following might suit your needs:
- Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable Round Brush, for I really like my #4 for some loose sketching.
- Escoda Kolinsky-Tajmyr Sable Pointed Round Series 1212 & 1214, a responsive brush manufactured in Spain.
- Raphael Kolinsky Red Sable Fine Pointed Round Series 8404, I still have to try one of these, but I have seen it mentioned often as a popular choice for comic book inkers.

Coloring cartoon sketches with watercolor pencils step-by-step

For one of the initial tests of my new Uni-ball Watercolor Pencil set, I decided to do a step-by-step demonstration of coloring a waterproof sketch with watercolor pencils. The Cretacolor leadholder loaded with the oil-based Nero lead was used to sketch this whimsical picture of two jungle animals-costumed characters on a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, and the set of watercolor pencils was used to quickly color it just like you would using regular colored pencils. The Nero lead was chosen because it does not smear as much as soft graphite pencil, and it behaves more like an oil-based black colored pencil. It did stain the tips of the watercolor pencils, so I was careful to avoid touching the Nero black outlines while coloring with the Uni watercolor pencils.
For the initial flat coloring is not necessary to saturate the outlines with the dry watercolor pencil marks since the steady flow of clean water from the waterbrush will blend and spread the pigment through each section of the illustration.
Close up of the loose dry coloring of the costumed girl's head.

I often find it easier to start at the head and work my way down. The yellow and ochre parts of the face, beak, and wings were moistened first. Then the pink and orange of head and upper body parts were further defined followed by the blue head feathers.
The waterbrush was used to selectively blend the dry colored pencils marks with water. It is more efficient to start from the lightest color and work towards the darker ones, so that the brush tip does not require too much cleaning between color changes.
This compact set up can work in very small spaces like this food court table. Taking a few minutes to stretch my legs and allow the initial flat coloring to dry a bit so later color applications will not run into each other uncontrollably.
Picking up pigment directly from the point of the Canary Yellow watercolor pencil with the moistened waterbrush to add some shading to the beak and wings. Watercolor pencils are quite a versatile medium functioning both as effective drawing tools as well as a ready source of watercolor paint. A few darker shades were added in a similar manner to add volume and texture to the initial flat coloring.
Finished illustration.
Final reminder tip: Use a napkin or paper towel to wipe the waterbrush clean between color changes and to wipe dry moistened pencil tips to prevent them from crumbling and weakening after using the pencils as watercolor pans.

Quick Manga Cartooning drawing session with Nicole

It had been a while since I had the opportunity to do a cartoon drawing session with my 5 years old niece Nicole. Thus I quickly drew a couple of Cerberus sketches for her to color as a warm up exercise. In order to develop their drawing skills, students must learn to see, think, and draw with different materials. Nicole impressed me with her observation skills and ability to break down reference material into the correct basic shapes when she pointed out my mistakes when sketching her coloring pages.
For example she immediately spotted that in my haste to complete my demonstration on drawing from reference, I incorrectly drew the blushing marks under the eyes as triangular shapes instead of the elliptical outlines shown in the character sheet guide. Which I promptly fixed with a handy eraser.
Colored pencil sketches of Card Captor Sakura's Cerberus.
Focused on her drawing for extended periods of time.
Drawing and coloring her own cartoon character.
Sketching a Chibi figure from reference Manga Cartooning handout with Staedtler Mars Ergosoft graphite triangular pencils. These ergonomic pencils are quite comfortable to hold and their triangular grippy barrel surface allows great precision in their application. I have been encouraging my niece's artistic development for years (documented throughout this blog) with gentle guidance and allowing her to use whatever artist grade supplies she cared to try under supervison (which is pretty much all of them: mechanical pencils, crayons, colored pencils, leadholders, pigment liner pens, markers, watercolors, brushes, and waterbrushes). Given her innate talent and dedication, she can already accurately draw the super-deformed (SD) body from the Manga Cartooning handout on body types used for older students.
Coloring mini sketch with Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils.Completed colored panel. Age is irrelevant when learning to draw. If you want to draw, you must simply do it by practicing constanly and seeking as many learning opportunities as you can (workshops, courses, books, online tutorials, drawing clubs). Train yourself to see, analyze and break dowm complex shapes into their simpler component shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones), and experiment with as many different types of drawing tools as you can find (which makes the whole learning process a lot more enjoyable). Perhaps the worse thing you can do to sabotage yourself is to say "I can't draw ____" from the start and never try. It might take a few tries and lots of hard work and study, but with a clear positive mind and at least one healthy drawing hand you can draw anything you can imagine or see around you.

Never too early to introduce kids to quality Art materials

I am strong believer that artistic development can be encouraged and nurtured by allowing children to explore their innate artistic talents with artist grade supplies that typically outperform children's art supplies with more saturated pigment-rich colors and smoother feel on the drawing paper support. Naturally close supervision and guidance are required, and it would probably be best to stick to non-toxic choices.
Introducing Mateo to some of the best crayons in the market: Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watercolor crayons.
Checking out some of my doodle pages and quick test of a couple of Maxon Comic screen tone symbols.
At one year old Mateo can hold the Sakura Pigma Sensei drawing pen, but probably needs to develop his motor skills a tad further for a few more months before tackling actual drawing activities.
Nicole and Camila enjoying some coloring activities with a set of Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils.
Doodling some favorite subjects with a Sakura Pigma Sensei pen.
I might be biased, but I do not think my own sketching symbols for princess and flowers at 5 years old were as recognizable as the current work of Nicole.

More Manga Sketching: Tons of mermaids and dragons

I had a blast this Saturday sketching for the kids at the The von Liebig Art Center Free family day. The most popular sketch request was probably Mermaid drawings for the girls and Dragons drawings for both boys and girls. Couple of the more unique requests were a drawing of roaches and a drawing of a mermaid with her puppy mermaid (that one was a first).
With all the excitement, I forgot to count how many drawings I was able to doodle over the 4 hours event, but judging by how empty my paper box ended up it was probably close to 70 quick sketches.
For those interested in the materials used, I relied mainly on a set of Sakura Pigma Sensei Manga Drawing set and a Faber Castell 4 Pitt Artist Pens Manga Drawing Set on 110 lb white card stock. Their pigmented black ink is both archival and waterproof, so the sketches are fairly light-fast and can be safely colored with watercolors.
When drawing so many sketches upon request, it's probably best to stick to the larger pen sizes to keep up the pace and produce bold outlines. I only needed to use the extra fine XS Pitt nib for writing in the name on the dog tag of a couple of puppies.
The 0.6 mm bullet tip ink nib and 1.0 mm bold tip felt nib of the Pigma Sensei were noticeably worn down by the end of the day since they were used most often, but they still perform quite well producing clearly defined dark lines.
Just in case you missed the Mermaid or Dragon coloring pages from the display table, I'm posting both files below.
Dragon Coloring page drawn with Pigma Sensei 1.0 mm pigment marker pen.
Mermaid Coloring Page drawn with Pigma Sensei 0.6 mm pigment marker pen. The following are a few scans from my display easel portfolio.
This coloring page was colored with Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils.
Faces drawn with pigment liners and colored with aquarelle sticks washes.
Faces drawn with pigment liners and colored with markers.
Robot guard coloring page drawn with Pigma Sensei 0.4 mm pigment marker pen.
Coloring page of Forest Ranger and feathered friends.
As promised, here is the other coloring page for the Forest Ranger 2.
Couple of mermaids drawn with pigment liners. Feel free to print it for reference or for some coloring fun.
Graphite sketch of a Manga face: big eyes, pointy chin, and small mouth rendered in a style often found in Shojo-manga (Japanese comics for girls).
Thanks for stopping by and hope you find some of the information on this blog useful in your path to learning more about manga sketching and my preferred art materials. Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.