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.

Mermaids Sketching Template

Feel free to print these two sheets for a bit of doodling fun.
Couple of more sketching handout sheets for the Holiday Cards classes.

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.

Cartoon Sketching at Children's Museum Birthday Party - Photo Journal

Did some cartoon sketching for the double birthday party at the Miami Children's Museum this past Saturday. Turned out be be a great choice of venue especially since it was a rather rainy day, and the staff did such a great job setting up and decorating the reserved classrooms for the event. Any gig where you do not have to worry about battling the elements is off to a great start.
I did not know we were going to have such a large dry erase board available at the party venue, but luckily I had one of my black Expo markers in my rolling case (leftover from my after-school manga classes). Thus I quickly doodled a few more cartoon samples on it as a demonstration of my sketching speed.
Ta-da!
A few colored samples and the two blank templates available were shown on my side easel.
Birthday girl Nicole and a friend stopped by for the first time at the cartooning corner once we finished setting up.The little guests starting looking over the pictures in display to figure out what to ask for in their own souvenir party sketches.
The very first drawing request of the afternoon was for a forest ranger from the single sketchbook that I brought along to the party.
Once we got started, there was a steady line of guests watching and enjoying the creation of several cartoon sketches while patiently waiting and deciding their own drawing requests.
Not surprisingly, most girls wanted to be drawn wearing mermaid tails or butterfly wings in their cartoon versions.
Several boys in a row wanted to be drawn as the "Caped Crusader: Batman" which luckily happens to be a favorite childhood hero of mine.
Nicole managed to stopped by for a second visit to the Cartooning Corner as the other birthday activities started winding down.
Most boys requested the always popular themes of superheroes or dragon sketches, but Mikey (tallest kid in the crowd) surprised me by asking just for a drawing of himself without the extra fantasy elements. Thus I went with a fairly straight cartoon portrait approach. Unfortunately my helper did not manage to document the finished drawings given the deluge of requests towards the end of the party and the fact that we had to pack up in a bit of a hurry. It was a lot of fun, and I estimate we managed to complete 20-25 sketches in the second half of the party.

Initial Session with the Mustangs group at the Boys & Girls Club

The students today really impressed me with their talent and enthusiasm.

Some of the drawings done by the Boys and Girls Club Mustangs group during the character design part of their first Manga Cartooning lesson using some index cards sketches that were provided as reference and some blank sketchboard templates for support.
Thus for their second session, I have prepared a series of Faber Castell Pitt Artist brush pen quick 3-minutes illustrations (about 19 reference doodles drawn in an hour at the food court while waiting for my color ink printer cartridge to get refilled) as examples of some of my sketching symbols from memory.

The students could use them as references to copy when they get stuck for inspiration. I suspect they might make also suitable coloring sheets.

A few more Mermaid coloring templates

Sample of mermaid fairy mini template colored with watercolors and highlighted with Caran D'Ache Neocolor I metallic crayons. For this coloring sample outlines were painted with watercolors, allowed to dry, and highlighted with metallic crayons in a bold manner reminiscent of the over drawings used on the Endangered Species portfolio (Warhol, 1983).
Another mermaid coloring template drawn with a Sakura Pigma Sensei 0.4 mm pigment liner pen.
No need to always color within the lines. Artists have the options of staying within the confines of the pre-drawn outlines or breaking free and apply color boldly in swatches to create excitement and catch the audience's attention. While it would not be practical nor safe to provide "diamond dust" (broken glass used by Warhol to add visual punch and interest to some of his series of prints) to students, similar results could be accomplished by using metallic crayons and sparkly glitter gel pens to add some finishing touches to marker colored templates.
Repeating pattern reflects Warhol's theme of multiples in much of his silk-screen print series.
Templates can be printed and colored with different color combinations to determine the best contrast and attractive designs by following the principles of color theory. Use a color wheel as reference to quickly pick sets of complementary colors for maximum impact.

More mermaid and tritons doodling

Warm up doodles page working out initial construction of some merfolk with a Pilot G-2 05 mechanical pencil. While boys tend not to be interested in being depicted as half human/half fish hybrids as much as much as girls, sketching tritons (the male counterparts to mermaids) can help round up the cast of characters for any story involving merfolk.
Doodling possible versions of Triton, mythological character (son of Neptune or Poseidon) with the head and upper torso of a man and a fish tail for lower body and occasionally depicted with horse forefeet attached to the front. Notice how the swirly warm up doodles come in handy as shorthand symbols to suggest turbulent waters by strategically placing them in the background.

How to draw mermaids: warm up exercises

0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil doodle warm up sheet.
Warm up doodles using a Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen M. Drawing random curves and spiral patterns is a good preliminary exercise for creating graceful cartoon mermaids.
A few of my simplified symbols for mermaids' pets and friends. I recommend sketching your own after visiting an aquarium or watching a marine nature show.