Cartoon Sketching Demo in the Screened Porch at Bond Park

Spent 3 hours last night at "Bands, Bites, and Boats at Bond Park" in this screened porch area.

There was plenty of room, overhead fans, table space, light, and art supplies for whatever crowd of kids decided to indulge in artistic endeavors as the band played and others opted to row in the evening.

Probably because of the lack of visibility, I had plenty of time to doodle some custom illustrations for coloring pages. For future events, we should probably put a bigger sign outside with sample pictures to entice more guests to come in.

Then in strolled Steve and asked if I could draw cartoon portraits of his party of six on a single sheet. Since I only had letter size card stock on hand, I drew him and his wife on one. their three kids on another, and their aunt on a third sheet. Happy birthday Steve! Glad I could brighten your family's evening.

Then this set of twins came in and had their portraits drawn while they colored some of the dragon coloring sheets I had on the activities table. Since they allowed me to choose, I drew one as a ninja and the other as a Jedi.

When i started to clean up, I offered them the pile of custom drawings I had made throughout the night to keep them busy until they can join us for some of the upcoming classes and camps at the Cary Arts Center. Also introduced the Center and passed brochures for ladies that stopped by to inquire about the nature our program for the evening. Thanks to everybody that stopped by.

Halloween Coloring Sheets for Upcoming Kids' Ball at Cary Arts Center

Spent an hour earlier today making this coloring sheets for the Halloween craft activities at the Cary Arts Center.



Also made some sample manga cartoon portraits of some characters from The Walking Dead.

Mythical Creatures Standing Cut-Out project sheet

Working on some new material for the Cartoon Sketching classes focusing on a fantasy theme.

Made a new ledger size activity-coloring sheet for the Creatures and Heroes sketching lessons this week.

Going to try a few different coloring materials and make a few samples for the display case at the Art Center.

Colorful Aztec Dragons

I always find it fun to see the many different coloring approaches that students use on my coloring templates.

The Aztec-inspired feathered serpent coloring page has been pretty popular lately during art camps and stand-alone single Manga Cartoon Sketching workshops.

These particular examples are from an impromptu coloring contest at one of my guest artist appearances at the Durham Arts Council art camps.

Drawing Cartoon Panda Characters and Sketching page completed with Crayola Super Tips Washable Markers

These are the Cartoon Panda reference sheet and sketching page template that I will be using in the Summer Art Camp in Immokalee this Friday.
The Panda Team sketching pages will be distributed to groups of kinders and second graders. Students will be instructed to create the background and add any additional characters using their imagination. On the board, the instructor will demonstrate basic cartoon figure construction and possible design elements that could be included in the activity sheet like: bamboo grove, castle, temple, pine forest, mountain, pagoda, torii gate, etc.
I believe one of the better values for kids' coloring tools can be found in the 50-pack of Crayola Super Tips Washable Markers. Their fine tips lend themselves well for sketching with the fine point and coloring quickly with their broad side. Noticed that the last batch of sets I got at Target were actually made in Italy.
Finished colored sample. Now go make some more Cartoon Panda Team adventures on some blank sheets of paper or folded mini comic with your trusty markers or other favorite coloring tools.

Panda Sketching Pages - Kids' activity for a rainy afternoon

Inspired by Sachiko Umoto's Illustration School books, I drew this reference sheet for a cartoon Panda featuring a couple of different facial expressions.
Print the Panda template of your choice and and sketch additional Panda friends and/or some typical Eastern paintings' background elements like pagodas, bamboo forests, rivers, mountains, etc.
How about making an entire "Panda Village" behind these two pals? Maybe draw some huts, rice paddies, koi pond, and some more bamboo stalks. A couple of cubs could even be drawn practicing their Wing Chun techniques.This last template should make a nice custom paper for folding origami airplanes that would sport a cute Panda logo on its fuselage.
Bonus activity sheet: Draw the background for this scene set in Antarctica. You could go naturalistic and sketch an entire penguin colony with some seal friends, or even use your imagination and create an Ice Palace with fantasy glacial inhabitants like "Ice Fairies"or "Snow Knights".

List of Direct Links to Activity and Coloring Sheets

Since we have reached well over 300 posts in this blog, I have added a list of direct links to posts featuring activity and coloring sheets samples and templates on the column to the right side of this layout. Hopefully this will make it easier for fellow teachers and parents to find and print art activity sheets for their kids without having to navigate throughout a ton of posts.
Now you can easily find coloring templates, pop-up card template, sheets of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs), and sketching sheets with partial drawings to complete.

300 post wo-hoo! Free Coloring Sheets of Manga Trading Cards Activity

To celebrate reaching this blogging milestone, I am sharing a couple colored samples (using two of the the coloring-sketch templates posted yesterday) and a 3 coloring sheets of manga-style fantasy Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) that you could use the next time a rainy day keeps the kids indoors.
Forest Guardian colored with Faber Castell Big Brush Artist pens.
Sample cartoon portrait colored with a waterbrush and Faber Castell Albrecht Durer aquarelle sticks.
Instructions: Print any of this fantasy trading card sheets on card stock and color with colored pencils or fine-tip markers. Then cut along the straight lines. Repeat and try different color combinations after reviewing your color theory.
The theme here was elemental or Magical ladies.
Bit of Egyptian inspiration in this set.

Caricature Stand at 2nd annual Mercato Fine Arts Festival and some Free Coloring-sketching activity pages

Spent Saturday drawing manga-style caricatures at the 2nd annual Mercato Fine Arts Festival in North Naples. Drew my fist set of twins on a single page, a colored tiger ninja warrior, a few straight portraits, and a couple of ninja cartoon portraits for Festival volunteers.
Even took a couple of reference shots of this lady bug that visited the caricature station later in the day.
Only managed to scan the caricature I drew of my mom from today's batch of cartoon portraits. So dear guests if you have the time and inclination to send me a scan or picture of your caricatures, I would be happy to add them to this post. Spent the rest of the time at the Festival drawing the following batch of coloring/sketch page templates for next week's classes. Feel free to print as many as you like on 8.5" X 11" paper or card stock to tackle the creative challenges below.
Draw a suitable background and color this Chinese Dragon.
Draw an action scene around this Ninja.
"What is this Zoo Keeper trying to catch with his net?"
"What is this Forest Guardian getting ready for?"
Sketch a castle for this Princess.
Draw an underwater scene around this armored mermaid.
Draw a magical garden filled with other fantasy creatures behind this butterfly fairy.
For this seated Mermaid sketch page: add graceful scales to her tail and draw what is catching her attention on the right side of the page.
For the Unicorn sketch page: add details and texture to the unicorn outline and draw a fantasy background castle at the end of the road.
This Rabbit template could be folded in half and used as a greeting card for Easter and/or Mother's day with some further decorations applied with markers and glitter glue. Naples readers: I will be going back to the Mercato from 10 am to 5 pm on Sunday, so feel free to drop by to say hi or get your live caricature done in a jiffy.

Family Art Night at Boys & Girls Club notes

At the last minute decided to add a few more pop-up card samples for the Family Art Night at the Boys & Girls Club that took place yesterday. We had a wide selection of coloring pages, standing cut-out cards, and card-making supplies (plenty of blank card stock, child-safe scissors, and glue sticks). Once the kids started with their coloring projects, I spent much of the evening speed sketching special requests (lots of ninjas and dragons and a few popular cartoon characters) and personalized cartoon portraits. As usual, I relied upon a fresh set of Sakura Pigma Sensei pens to draw constantly at top speed with smooth bold lines. I really wish I could get their 0.6 and 1.0 mm pens in bulk, for they are great cartooning pens that sadly are yet not available in open-stock.
Among the assorted art supplies that I brought to the event, we had a set of Elmer's Squeeze 'n Brush Washable Paint-Cool Classics brush pens. While a few kids seemed to enjoy using them, they were also the messiest choice from our range of coloring options (mainly washable Crayola markers in regular and Pip-squeak format, watercolor pencils, and a portable Sketch, Color & Paint art set). I do not think I will continue using them in venues where a wash sink is not so readily available. At least the paint washed off easily enough from my hands. Note to self: Gotta remember the tub of baby wipes for outside venues.A couple of kids actually tackled the pop-up card idea and required just a bit of help at the end to attach their colored pieces to the blank pop-up cards that were prepared in advance.
This budding artist in particular spent a good part of the evening doing a great coloring job on the ninja elf coloring template. Keep on practicing and speed will develop naturally as I told most of you when you commented on how fast I could speed sketch throughout the event.

Dragons, Robots, Mermaids, and Knights coloring cards

Just assembled these two Manga-style trading cards coloring sheets for the older students at an upcoming Family Night Event at the Immokalee Charter School.With Clash of the Titans in movie theaters, Greek mythology was fresh in my mind so the Gorgon and Mermaid take up half of this manga-style trading cards sheet meant for the girls.
Inspired a tad by Bakugan (particularly the robot on the upper right corner), came up with this manga style cards for the boys.
Finished sample colored with watersoluble pencils: Derwent Watercolour and Graphitint. Already ordered some Crayola watercolor pencils and brushes to complement our supply of washable markers for the Art Night event. We plan to have these multiple coloring cards sheets and letter-size sketching sheets featuring cartoon style illustrations popular with the students. These sketching sheets have some empty space around a single character, so students can add their own backgrounds or additional characters. For the younger students, we'll also have a supply of the Standing Character Templates that were already successfully used for a Family Art Night event at a pre-school a couple of weeks ago.Table set up at the event. Couple of cartoon portraits drawn while the students colored their activity sheets.