Day at the Naples Zoo

Learned quite a few facts about giraffes, took tons of photo references at the Naples Zoo, and had quite a pleasant day with family. All in all a Sunday well-spent. Zoo visits can provide tons of opportunities for improving your animal sketching skills and gathering plenty of photo reference material at the same time. The small Moleskine sketchbook is just the right size to carry around for taking a few visual notes during such outings.The leopards provided some exciting action shots.Malayan tiger awaiting a treat at the Meet the Keeper show.Keeper getting close and personal with a gator during feeding time.Well-fed Florida panther. One of the best features of this zoo, is how close visitors can get to the animals and the glass viewing areas that allow for some picture taking without the wire net in front of them.Lion getting a meat treat from his keeper.

A few Moleskine pencil doodles

It is usually a good idea to keep a small sketchbook and pencil with you at all times, for you never know when you might have a few free minutes that could be productively spent making some drawings or writing some thoughts down.
Sandbox at the playground inspired this straight cartoon portrait drawn while sitting on the edge of the sandbox.
Trip to the Zoo
inspired "Tato Keeper of Mutant Bees".
Dragon ninja in training
inspired "Tato meets his Dragon avatar". A pocket Moleskine sketchbook is the ideal size to take along on all sorts of outings and make quick notes, record stray thoughts, and sketch some doodles for later use. If I do not have much warning or carrying space on a given day, I simply stuff the Moleskine with my Worther Shorty or Staedtler leadholder in one of my pockets before going out.

Coloring cartoon sketches with watercolor pencils step-by-step

For one of the initial tests of my new Uni-ball Watercolor Pencil set, I decided to do a step-by-step demonstration of coloring a waterproof sketch with watercolor pencils. The Cretacolor leadholder loaded with the oil-based Nero lead was used to sketch this whimsical picture of two jungle animals-costumed characters on a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, and the set of watercolor pencils was used to quickly color it just like you would using regular colored pencils. The Nero lead was chosen because it does not smear as much as soft graphite pencil, and it behaves more like an oil-based black colored pencil. It did stain the tips of the watercolor pencils, so I was careful to avoid touching the Nero black outlines while coloring with the Uni watercolor pencils.
For the initial flat coloring is not necessary to saturate the outlines with the dry watercolor pencil marks since the steady flow of clean water from the waterbrush will blend and spread the pigment through each section of the illustration.
Close up of the loose dry coloring of the costumed girl's head.

I often find it easier to start at the head and work my way down. The yellow and ochre parts of the face, beak, and wings were moistened first. Then the pink and orange of head and upper body parts were further defined followed by the blue head feathers.
The waterbrush was used to selectively blend the dry colored pencils marks with water. It is more efficient to start from the lightest color and work towards the darker ones, so that the brush tip does not require too much cleaning between color changes.
This compact set up can work in very small spaces like this food court table. Taking a few minutes to stretch my legs and allow the initial flat coloring to dry a bit so later color applications will not run into each other uncontrollably.
Picking up pigment directly from the point of the Canary Yellow watercolor pencil with the moistened waterbrush to add some shading to the beak and wings. Watercolor pencils are quite a versatile medium functioning both as effective drawing tools as well as a ready source of watercolor paint. A few darker shades were added in a similar manner to add volume and texture to the initial flat coloring.
Finished illustration.
Final reminder tip: Use a napkin or paper towel to wipe the waterbrush clean between color changes and to wipe dry moistened pencil tips to prevent them from crumbling and weakening after using the pencils as watercolor pans.

Suggested year-long project for improving your drawing skills

Borrowing the idea from German graphic designer Manuela Hoffmann, I have been using my Moleskine weekly planner as a sketchbook and doing some test doodles with my Pentel Color Brush pens and Prismacolor Premier Archival Markers. The former were hard to control as their dye inks bled through the thin planner paper, but the latter worked just fine with their pigmented inks barely showing through the back of the page.
While thin planner paper might not seem like an ideal choice for a sketchbook, it can handle pigment liner pens and most dry media like color pencils and wax crayons quite well. Now with New Year day long past on the year of the Ox, most retailers are significantly marking down calendar planners and many journals. Found a couple of nice choices at Borders this afternoon, a 3.5" x 5.5" Moleskine Daily Planner 2009 and a A5 size Paperchase multicolor journal. Either one would make a suitable replacement for my current Kolo journal which I use as my main travel sketchbook.
These small formats allow for the completion of small doodles and sketches on a regular basis anywhere: daily or weekly. So here is the mission boys and girls if you choose to accept it: pick your planner in a size small enough you can carry around comfortably and commit to doodling or sketching a page-a-day (or a page-a-week as your schedule allows). The prize: by the time you complete your sketchbook journal you are bound to have improved your drawing skills and at the very least sharpened your dexterity. The proof will be conveniently documented chronologically in your planner turned sketchbook. I would recommend picking subjects you enjoy to keep you focused (pets, fairies, mermaids, ponies, robots, dinosaurs, cars, rockets, etc), with some challenges mixed in to work on areas you might find somewhat difficult to draw (like "hands seen from different angles" and/or anything you know you want to draw better). By the end of the year, you are sure to end up with your own menagerie of fantastic sketches and greater confidence in your drawing skills.

Lamy Scribble is a perfect fit for kids' hands

One of the main themes of this blog is that a fun and effective way to encourage kids to embrace their own artistic paths and growth is to share artist grade tools with them, so they can try them under supervised conditions. In this case, I lent my large Moleskine sketchbook and a sturdy 3.15 mm Lamy Scribble (loaded with a Caran D'Ache 3.0 mm HB lead) to my niece for some doodling before bedtime.
Her first drawing was that of her trusty symbol for "robot".
As she grew comfortable with this sketching set up, she started to look around the room for subjects to draw: a stuffed pumpkin (to which she added her whimsical symbols for "butterfly", "duck", and "mouse").
And a fairly literal representation of the night table with a lamp.
The Scribble compact size, well-balanced body, and ergonomic grip make it a perfectly suitable tool for little hands. The 3.15 mm lead size resists breakage and can yield interesting strokes of varying line weight. Lamy lead refills seem to be available only in 4B that can smear rather easily on some papers. Yet the Scribble can also hold the Caran D'Ache Tehnograph 3.0 mm lead refills that come in HB, 3B, and 6B and are twice as long as the Lamy refills. The HB leads tend to yield cleaner marks that resist smudging. Though a tad pricey, the Scribble would make a fine present on a special occasion for the young drawing enthusiast in the family.