Pop-Up Cards from Ninjas & Dragons Art Camp

We had a very talented group of students in our last Ninjas & Dragons Summer art Camp at the Cary Arts Center, so just wanted to share some of their original pop-up card designs.

Notice the little ninja hanging on a rope at the top of the card.

A second ninja faces against a Water Dragon.

Penguin ice castle.

More Ninja versus Dragon scenarios.

Dragon Designs Workshop

Got a full class for our Dragon Designs 1-day workshop at the Cary Arts Center on September 25th. These are some of the 11"x15" sample Sharpie sketches I prepared today. We'll go over basic tips on drawing dragon heads, serpentine bodies, and scales rendering. We will have a variety of coloring media for students to explore:colored and watercolor pencils, pan watercolors, markers, watersoluble graphite crayons, and pastels.

Using Faber Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist Pens to color my Sketchbook sample for upcoming classes at the Art Center

Using my feathered dragon serpent cover for the sketchbooks that we'll be using in the class and camps starting this week at the Cary Arts Center. Decided to prepare a colored sample to have on hand, so I chose Faber Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist Pens to get the job done in a flash. Their larger brush nibs and juicy pigmented inks can cover smooth card stock pretty quickly and uniformly. The colors remain pretty vibrant since the pigment sits on top of the card stock instead of being absorbed into it like conventional marker inks.

Coloring one of the internal pages printed on 20 lb multipurpose paper was a tad uneven, but still the Pitt inks remain on one side and did not bleed through the sheet.

When held against the light, the image can be seen through the back. Unlike water-based markers, the Pitt pens inks do not seep through and barely cause some warping on the page when applied a bit more heavily. Regular kids markers would saturate the paper with dye ink that would be visible on both sides and even bleed through several pages.

Sample Knight and Dragon mini-book colored by my nephew

Pretty impressed and proud of my 6-year old nephew's skill in coloring and drawing in the Knight & Dragon mini-book that I use in some of my cartoon drawing classes.

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.

Practice Cartoon Coloring & Sketching Assignment Sheets

While some of these practice sheets have been posted before, I figured I would list together all of the bonus sketch pages we have made available for students to take home and practice their budding creative skills after completing their Holiday Card decorating activities in the after-school special classes.