Manga Drawing Workshop at Cameron Village Regional Library

Somehow these pictures from a Manga Drawing Workshop held at the Cameron Village Regional Library back in October got lost in my stash of memory cards.  Thanks Nicole for inviting me, it was fun to talk about Manga, Japanese Pop culture, and sketching techniques with the teens of the Anime Club.  Special thanks to the generous folks from Jerry's Artarama in Raleigh that donated tons of art supplies for the kids to experiment with.  Attendants had a blast trying out and sketching with the different grades of graphite pencils and the set of SoHo colored pencils during the art engagement portion of the program.  I was also pleasantly surprised by the brightness of the colors and their fairly smooth lay down considering that they seem to be a student grade product.  I would highly recommend visiting the Raleigh store if you are looking for gift ideas for the creatively-minded in your lists.  I already picked up a few sketchbooks and visual journals from their wide selection to add to the gift bundles for my cousins and nieces.  They also carry the blister card with the full range of Faber Castell Graphite Aquarelle pencils and a paintbrush that make a pretty versatile sketching kit.

Prismacolor Premier Portrait Set of 24 Colored Pencils Review

Got this Prismacolor Premier Portrait Set of 24 colored pencils on clearance for under 10 bucks at a store closing a while back but did not get around to reviewing until now.
Color chart drawn on Global Art Flexi-Sketch sketchbook. The pencils have a fairly smooth lay down, but they also have a tendency to crumble a bit. It was necessary to brush off the lead debris several times while drawing these color chart. If using the pencils at home on a flat surface, the plastic trays that they are packaged in are an adequate storage option.
If you plan to use them on the go in a field sketching kit, it would probably be more practical to transfer them to a pencil wrap where each pencil is secured individually in its own elastic loop and the whole set can be kept chromatically arranged under any working conditions.
This Prismacolor Portrait Set is a handy selection of colored pencils for drawing and coloring faces. Leads are soft and creamy, but they can also be easily damaged if the pencils are dropped on the floor. The light umber pencil in this set was probably damaged during transport. Its lead kept breaking off after repeated sharpening attempts with different sharpener models (electric and handheld). At least I was able to sharpen it with a utility knife saving about 50% of its original length. Most of my Prismacolor pencil sets have had a couple of duds with extremely brittle leads that rendered entire pencils unusable. Yet they are often easy to replace since many stores carry this brand in open stock. They are worth trying if found on sale or at clearance prices.

Good time to shop for bargains on School Art Supplies

Now that the school year is well on its way, most big box retailers have begun discounting the remaining stock in their Back-to-School supplies sections as the stores are rearranged for the next seasonal shopping event. Many quality supplies can be had with various discounts ranging from 30-90% off. Most of the stuff shown above was a buck or less each.
Found this neat Brazilian 24 colored pencils with sharpener set just for 50 cents + tax in the East coast. According to the manufacturer's website, these pencils are manufactured with reforested wood from their own managed plantations keeping in mind the protection of the local flora and fauna.
Can't help finding it a bit odd to discover a Faber Castell pencil set at an American big box retailer with all the descriptive text printed just in Spanish and Portuguese.
24 nicely colored coded long pencils with gold lettering plus a sharpener for under a buck was a pretty good deal if I ever saw one.
These pencil sets would make pretty good stocking stuffers, birthday party favors, or Halloween giveaways for those with storage room to spare.
The color chart shows that this school pencil set can produce some fairly bright color swatches. I wouldn't bet on their longevity and lightfastness, but they feel quite smooth on the paper and would provide adequate performance for a spot of coloring fun for any kid artist.

Review of the Barnes & Noble Wacky Birds Colored Pencil Block in Acetate Box Set of 13

On a recent trip to a Barnes & Noble bookstore, I found this neat set of colored pencils.
Their original block pencil set presentation resembles a pencil "sandwich" before it is cut into individual pencils, so it could easily be used as a visual aid when explaining to kids how pencils are made.
Despite their natural interest in coloring and drawing activities, younger kids might grow bored with the limitations of the same old materials (mostly crayons) available to them for their artistic pursuits. To keep them motivated, it is a good idea to introduce new drawing and coloring tools from time to time.

Both of my pre-school age nieces enjoyed folding and rolling the flexible pencil block set while the 12 colored pencils were still attached to each other. The oldest one quickly pointed out that this colored pencil set was"clearly" designed for kids and shrewdly talked me into letting her take them home after promising that she would share them with her little sister.
The rectangular profile of each pencil is rather unique and comfortable enough for doodling with the added advantage that they won't roll off an inclined drawing surface.
The pencils can be easily sharpened with standard sharpeners.
Freshly sharpened set. Top side of the pencil block features the picture of whimsical birds while the bottom and sides are painted white.Since each colored pencil is decorated only one one side, they can also function as an easily solvable puzzle by memorizing the color sequence of the set.
For an inexpensive gift set, these Wacky Birds Colored Pencils laid down fairly bright colors on the white card stock. After completing this color chart, I used a few colors on the apple sketch as an example for Nicole that she could use more than the red pencil to render the apple surface. Thus, she promptly sketched the falling apple with the red, orange, green, and purple pencils underneath and even saved some white to convey its reflective surface. These 13 pencils make for a nice portable sketching gift set.

Recommended coloring tools for Manga quick sketches

Once you get enough fun out of the mini colored pencil sets, it might be time to consider graduating to artists' pencils. For intermediate artists, it might be more productive to invest on quality tools that will yield better images with less effort. After all, leisure time is too short and precious to spoil it with the frustration of using inadequate cheap art supplies. A nice tin set of one of my favorite colored pencils, Faber Castell Polychromos, would make a good addition to any artists' tool box with performance that is hard to beat. They are oil-based and highly pigmented, so they have a smooth laydown, are immune to blooming ("cloudiness" that sometimes appears when layering some waxy pencils), and blend easily. The 3.8 mm pencil leads are quite break-resistant and do not crumble much on the work surface as the tips wear down, so they are pretty clean to use anywhere.A black ink Platinum brush pen was used to quickly doodle an outline to color, so the incorrect proportions of the arms and hands could not be easily corrected (Bonus points if you had already noticed that, proof that your observation skills are improving already and that it would have been better to work out the figure structure in pencil first!). The point of the demonstration though was to simply show the value of using an adequately-sized set to avoid the flat coloring look often seen in children's coloring books where a single color is used for each section of an outline. I had a set of 48 pencils available which gave me enough choices to pick 3 or 4 closely related colors to render each area of the sketch and give them some volume and texture. Skin tones were colored with 3 different pinks, the shirt with a couple of blues and purple, and the hair with some brown earth colors plus some dark blue for shadows. Bottom line, a larger colored pencils set provides greater choices and more flexibility to create brightly colored and more expressive manga drawings.

Bookstores' Colored Pencils

Picked up an inexpensive set of 24 short colored pencils (3 3/8" long) neatly packaged in a Kraft tube at Borders. Its compact size make it suitable for field sketching and ideal for long car trips with the kids.
Already had a set of large colored pencils from Barnes and Noble artist supplies section in my studio collection.
Both sets are unpainted which lends them a rather distinctive look laying down on a drawing table, but in practice it slows down color selection while working with them. Always a good idea to make color charts of new coloring sets on a sketchbook for future reference of their actual hue and intensity on the paper.
The smaller pencils' swatches were slightly more saturated, but neither set was particularly bright like professional artist pencils. Sets of these student grade art supplies are useful as starter sets for fledgling artists and to keep their younger siblings entertained once they switch to artist grade supplies.

X-mas is approaching!!!

Gift suggestion for the kid artists in your list: colored pencils bundled with a generous supply of pencil sharpeners and a nice big sketchbook. Brand choices available in the children's art sections of Art & Craft stores and general retailers are quite adequate. Though if the kid in question has proven to be responsible and dedicated enough to handle Artist grade materials, you might want to shop around online for Prismacolor, Faber-Castell, Derwent, or Caran D'Ache colored pencil sets. In general there is a significant improvement in ease of use and color intensity when switching to the artist grade products. Still within the children's product range, Faber-Castell Red Line consistently provide bright intense colors.