Summer Art Camp Cartoon Portraits and Pop-Up Cards

Just concluded a Summer Art Camp focus on "Aquatic Creatures" and another on "Merfolk and fantasy creatures". By the end of the week, we were all pretty much done with the "fish/underwater" theme. Thus students in the older group got a cartoon portrait each, some continue drawing, and others made pop-up cards.








Several students in the younger group made multiple pop-up cards for different occasions.

Summer Camps are Over

Our Summer Art Camp term just concluded at the Cary Arts Center. Thanks for your participation and I wish you an interesting and  productive school year. Hope you continue to enrich your lives practicing and refining your art skills along the way. For those of you that developed an appreciation for sketching with leadholders, you might want to check the post below for shopping options. For a good source of Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens, I would recommend checking Blick's, Jerry's Artarama, or Askew Taylor since many of you seemed to enjoy drawing and coloring with their archival pigmented India inks during the cartoon sketching camps.

Cartoon Portrait Gallery of Students on Final Day of Clay camp

Today I subbed for a fellow instructor at the Cary Arts Center on the final day of a Clay camp, so we had the students work on custom comicbooks/sketchbooks, try their hand at folding ninja stars and boomerangs, and each student got their cartoon portrait drawn as a souvenir or for coloring it in class.

All the boys chose to de depicted as ninjas.

The girls went with fairy, forest ranger, mermaid, and the final request was for the sketch of a three-toed sloth (which /i did not get around to photograph).

Family Fun day at Brilliant Sky Toys & Books of Cary

Thank you to all the guests that stopped by the cartoon portrait station earlier this afternoon at Brilliant Sky Toys & Books of Cary.  It was fun to speed sketch 55 cartoon portraits from 4:00 pm to 6:45 pm (which works out to be a rate 20 letter-size pictures an hour! - probably something of a personal record an even got the paper cuts to prove it) in a variety of fun themes: dragon warriors, ninjas, mermaids, fairies, and princesses.  The most unique requests of the day were for a "Nascar driver" grandma and a "Devil" kid.  Found it quite amusing that the mom commented that it was quite the appropriate choice for the latter one.  Also distributed some paper airplanes and dragon/ninja mini comics as examples of the materials and activities featured in upcoming "Cartoon Sketching" classes at the Cary Arts Center.  The week-long summer camp sessions consist of five 3-hour long classes where we cover character and creature design, practice some speed sketching, draw mini-comics, create pop-up cards and dioramas, fold origami airplanes and ninja stars, and draw some inspiration from ancient civilizations and Japanese pop-culture (comics and animation).  You can find full descriptions for the planned classes in the online catalogs.  I included a sheet with all my class registration codes in the catalogs that were on hand, or you could simply check the post below.

ARTScool 2011 Final gallery - Open House

Today we held the ARTScool 2011 Open House to showcase samples of the students' work created during the past 8 weeks of summer art camp held at The von Liebig Art Center.
These graphic works were on display in the hallways throughout the building and on the tables of 3 classrooms.
It was a lot of fun to see so many entire families walking through the exhibit and collecting their kids' final projects on this Sunday afternoon.
I enjoyed the opportunity of chatting with some of the parents of the talented kids that took my classes this summer.
It is always nice to hear course feedback directly from the satisfied parents and kids.
Even on our final day, a few interns were hard at work unloading the kiln since the students from David Himmel's ClaysCool class worked on their projects all the way until last Friday. David is a great teacher for kids of all ages and levels with many taking his class multiple times in the summer. After a solid foundation on ceramic building techniques and glazing, kids are able to explore their creativity in 3-D in no time. ARTScool 2011 was a complete success, so hope that most students, interns, and fellow instructors will return for ARTScool 2012. In the meantime, keep sketching and drawing kids!

ARTSCool Cartoon Sketching Week-7 Photo Gallery

Photo gallery of my final Cartoon Sketching class for ARTScool 2011 at The von Liebig Art Center. This group of boys and girls ranged in age from 6 to 11 years old.
Students had the opportunity to try a variety of coloring tools: markers, watercolor pencils, watercolor crayons, and even some soft pastels.
Drawing from reference Xevoz kits
and fantasy chibi drawings from imagination.
Making a pop-up castle card.
Several students jumped at the opportunity to color the chibi animal characters from one of the class drawing demonstrations.
Hmm, perhaps coloring on the dry erase board should be part of the curriculum for future classes next summer.
Throughout the week all the students received several cartoon portraits and custom drawing requests as souvenirs or starting point for different inking and coloring projects.
Half of the students already got their PanPastel and Prismacolor Art Stix colored cartoon portraits, so I will complete the remaining later today. Thank you to all the students and interns that participated in one of my Cartoon Sketching classes this summer. With our impending move to North Carolina, this might just have been my last summer class at The von Liebig Art Center. It has been an honor working with all of you, and I hope that you will all continue to embrace your artistic side and keep on sketching and further developing your artistic skills. Keep on drawing and filling many sketchbooks!

Drawing Lions at Highlands Elementary Summer Art camp

My deepest thanks to the staff at Highlands Elementary Summer Art camp for your hospitality and support. Teaching in eight different classrooms each day would not have been as effective without your aid, and special thanks to those of you that doubled as photographers on my last day in Immokalee. Fellow instructors please remember as part of my continuous support for the creative endeavors of the students in the area you are welcome to download and print the coloring templates and activity sheets (included on the links list on the right) for future art classes. It was a pleasure working wiht all of you.
We had groups of kinder through 2nd grade work on tracing or drawing lions, giraffes, and other African animals as part of the day camp art activities.
A few carefully selected reference sheets on animal drawing, several packs of Crayola super tip markers, and generous supply of paper = groups of happy kids drawing their favorite animals.

Kids demonstrated their creativity by drawing their own backgrounds for their African animals.
Guess lots of the kids had seen the animated movie "Madagascar", for many included an airplane in the skies above their African savanna landscapes.
Being my last day at the summer art camp, we made sure that all my students got at least one souvenir cartoon portrait after our three sessions together.
You can see the influence of the animal drawing lessons in their customization requests. Many students asked to be drawn riding or holding some kind of animal.
Thanks again to the caring staff at Highlands Elementary for your support and the great work you did with the children every day of this summer program.