Private Art Session for Kids

4 kids (Ages 3 to 8 years old) + 4 waterbrushes + Pan watercolor kit = Fun time exploring water media during the weekend.

Drawing and coloring of Minecraft character.

Coloring a carton portrait with a waterbrush.

The deck bench proved to be a suitable drying rack in the nice weather.

Switching to some marker coloring.

Never too young to enjoy a fine Fixpencil leadholder.

Creative Workshop with the Kids: Sharing art supplies with the nieces

It had been a while since we had a chance to visit with my star art students, so I brought a fairly large selection of art supplies to share with them this past Sunday.
Camila coloring with Sakura Koi watercolors and a waterbrush.
Drawing with a full set Prismacolor Art Stix woodless colored pencils.
The ever popular fairy motifs.
Camila loading a Sofft knife with Burnt Sienna. Their similarity to make-up tools made PanPastel jars and their applicator tools quite appealing to the girls.
Added some extra colors with Crayola watercolor pencils.
Nicole using an Art sponge for broad color application.Using a mini applicator for more delicate coloring.
The PanPastel and Sofft tools were a big hit with the girls that used them to color small trading card-size pieces and 8.5" X 11" sheets of card stock. The erasability of PanPastel layers was a great feature that allowed the kids to make quick corrections with regular erasers when the coloring got outside the lines by accident. The low dusting properties of these soft pastels made them fairly easy to clean afterward with a wet rag and a vacuum cleaner. Always keep a close eye on your budding artists when allowing them to explore the creative potential of artist grade art supplies.

Kids' Watercoloring Afternoon Fun

Recipe for a bit of creative fun on a rainy afternoon: 1 set of 24 Pelikan Transparent watercolor pans, stack of 24 lb white paper, and couple of budding artists (5 & 7 years old).
An ideal setting for this endeavor should have a convenient fresh water supply: think kitchen table.
Abstract pieces by Nicole.
Camila's abstract piece.
Used a splatter technique to apply paint.
Just make sure to protect the work area beneath with some newspaper and have some wet paper towels on hand for quick clean up jobs.

Piccadilly Anime Flowers Sketchbook Review

While you can certainly practice your sketching and drawing skills on loose inexpensive sheets of printer paper, every once in while it might be a good idea to work on some type of sketchbook so you can maintain a more permanent chronological record of your artistic development. I own several sketchbooks in different sizes filled with assorted papers suited for different sketching tools to meet the needs and mood of any situation I might encounter.Occasionally a new sketchbook ends up in my rather large collection of partially filled sketchbooks mainly because I found myself away from home in an unexpected waiting situation without an adequate supply of drawing paper (Reminder: always carry a sketchbook with you! especially if you do not want to end up buried under a pile of unfinished sketchbooks ;)). Recently I picked up this 8.5" X 11" top spiral bound Piccadilly Anime Flowers sketchbook with 100 sheets of white paper in the bargains section of the local Barnes & Noble bookstore. Being left-handed, I really like that the wire binding is on top away from my drawing hand. Small enough to fit on any backpack or messenger bag, it is quite suitable for sketching on-the-go.
This markings sample chart shows that the paper can readily accept pigmented plastic nib pens, brush pens, graphite pencils, and colored drawing leads.
Uni F 2 mm graphite lead test doodle.
Uni H 2 mm graphite lead test doodle.Pilot Neox Violet Color Eno 0.7 mm drawing lead test sketch.
While this sketchbook might work best with dry media and some pens, it can also handle some light watercolor washes. Used some Winsor & Newton Artists' watercolors to color the waterproof ink sketches above with minimal buckling of its lightweight paper. Economical choice for a practical field sketchbook.

Impromptu night art class for my nieces

Even after a long day of teaching art classes (for myself) and a full day at the beach (for my nieces Nicole and Camila), we still managed to do a bit of art in the evening before calling it a day. Always have a set of aquarelle sticks and a few waterbrushes handy for some impromptu watercolor sketching.
Pentel Aquash pocket set with 8 color pans provides a compact source for coloring and keeps mess to a minimum.
Enjoying the convenience of a Niji waterbrush.

Sketching with a leadholder loaded with a B lead.
Bit of watercolor sketching.
Comic cover featuring a princess in a garden partially colored with Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils.

Another watercolor kit for kids

Got this Faber Castell Gel Sticks set on clearance at a Target store for under 7 bucks. Each stick has a protective cap and twistable-advance mechanism like a stick of ChapStick, so they are pretty clean to use. These watercolor crayons have a tad unusual texture, for they feel like very soft, creamy, and moist pastels that blend easily with a waterbrush. They deliver reasonably bright flat washes. Quick color chart shown below:
The colors might tend to stain a bit on certain surfaces, so care should be taken to protect surrounding areas while painting. I had to use Masters Brush soap to clean my waterbrush from the red crayon stains.

Watercolor thumbnails

A fun practical way to get to know your watercolor paints and brushes is to sketch thumbnails. By making quick test strokes with different strength washes of a single color and testing simple color mixtures on a small surface (this example was done on a 7" X 10" Arches Cold Press-CP watercolor block which has a slightly rough surface), you can quickly get a sense of the tonal and hue range that can be accomplished with the palette selection of a given paint box. It is also an efficient way to figure out picture composition (the way parts are arranged within a picture) and the effects that can be created with a given brush. The two top rows in this example were sketched with Utrecht watercolors using a fine #1 Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinski sable brush, and the bottom rows were done with a large Pentel Aquash waterbruh and Pentel Vacance watercolors. As it would be expected, the small #1 sable brush can produce very fine details like the branches in the first thumbnail (top left corner) while the large waterbrush can create broader strokes and faster paper coverage as seen in bottom thumbnails.
The thumbnails below were done with Maimeri Blu 12-pans watercolor set on a 7" X 10" Arches Hot Press (HP) watercolor block using a #3 Winsor & Newton Artists' Watercolor sable brush. This new watercolor brush features a longer contoured handle that might take some time to get used to for those that enjoy sketching on a drafting table (for which I find shorter handle brushes to be more comfortable). The paint can be harder to control on the smooth HP surface, for it tends to sit on the paper longer before drying. It might often seem that washes are easier to control on a CP support (another name for watercolor paper), but it would be advisable to try and practice on both to discover their strengths and the effects that can be created on each. When painting landscapes, I would try the CP support first. The HP support is recommended for fine detailed work, and it's also a good paper for color pencils.

Watercolor tips for Kids

As much as kids enjoy to paint with watercolors, parents often worry about the potential mess from having young ones working with brushes, wet paint, and buckets of water in pristine kitchens and playrooms. A couple of products in the market make it fairly neat and simple for anyone to sketch with watercolors anywhere with no fuss. Instead of using watercolors tubes, provide little ones with a good assortment of watercolor pencils or watersoluble crayons coupled with a waterbrush.

Popular brands to consider include Faber-Castell, Caran D'Ache, Derwent, Niji, and Pentel. The latter makes a nice compact sketching kit that can be ordered online.It's often useful to create a color chart by scribbling swatches of color on a small card made out of the same support used for watercolor sketching to familiarize budding artists with the colors available to them. These cards can also serve as very portable palettes (tucked inside a field sketchbook), since the scribbled pigment can be picked up from them with a wet brush or waterbrush to complete small coloring tasks. When switching colors, the waterbrushes can be easily cleaned by gently squeezing out a few drops of fresh water and dabbing the brush tip on a clean paper towel or sponge. No separate pots of water required, but cleaning under running tap water might be necessary if the brush tip gets heavily soiled with a strong pigment.

The tools pictured above are ideal for on-the-go sketching on postcards, pocket sketchbooks, and 7" X 10" watercolor blocks. Shown closed and ready for travel in the picture below (clockwise starting from top left corner): Winsor & Newton Cotman Water Colour Field Plus Set , Pentel Vacance Water Color for Artist, Yasutomo plastic folding palettes filled with assortment of Holbein, Daniel Smith, and Winsor & Newton artists watercolor tube paints, Derwent pencil wrap loaded with watercolour pencils, Cotman 15 water colour postcards pad, Hand Book 5½" × 5½" Artist Journal, Moleskine 3½" × 5½" watercolor notebook, and Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer Aquarelle Sticks set of 20.
The Field Plus Set is a nice gadget, but a tad on the bulky side especially considering that a good waterbrush renders the waterbottle feature somewhat superfluous (at least within an urban environment where bottled water or a sink are usually not too far away, but I guess a dedicated canteen would be an asset out in the wild). The cakes from the original Cotman pans have been replaced with artist grade tube paints, but they were inexpensive beginner paints suitable for practice and sketching. The Plus cartridge system is convenient for swapping paint pans quickly and keeping each color separate from the rest preventing contamination.

The Pentel Vacance kit is not readily available in the USA (got mine at the Kinokuniya Stationary store in San Francisco's Japantown). It features a rotating thumb ring on the bottom for a comfortable grip and a cleaning sponge for the included medium Aquash waterbrush (which are kind of hard to find, so it's good to see that some online retailers are starting to carry them). This watercolor box's main drawback is that it's easy to contaminate colors since the pans are so close to each other.

The plastic folding palettes are inexpensive, light, offer plenty of large mixing areas, and can be loaded with any selection of favorite tube paints. Some green and blues (phthalos) pigments unfortunately tend to stain them permanently.

The Derwent canvas pencil wrap is a pretty convenient way of carrying pencils and keeping them organized while working anywhere. Although depending on the finish and diameter of the pencils (especially those smaller than 10 mm), there is a tendency for some to slip out of their holding loops and fall off the wrap. The revised model featured in some British websites has corrected this flaw, but I have yet to see it on any US retailers' sites. As for the watercolor pencils, I prefer the brands that color code the entire pencil barrel for ease of identification and that yield bright color washes. Currently my favorites are Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils and Caran d'Ache Supracolor Soft Aquarelle Pencils. Derwent watercolour pencils perform well and are readily available in local craft stores like Michael's, but I dislike their current color-coding system of only marking the pencil end and their slightly duller and "milkier" washes. Derwent did release a 36 watercolour pencils 50th year special edition box on 2003 for which they painted the entire barrels (see picture with open pencil wrap which incidentally has traveled with me in my carry-on bag on many flights), and some of them can still be found in retail stores.

The 4"×6" postcard format is an ideal working size for various reasons: requires little paint and water limiting potential mess, can be completed on a short time since it usually dries quickly, and the resulting sketches can be mailed to relatives like proud grandparents that would likely treasure the works of their fledgling Van Goghs.

My original set of 20 Faber Castell Albrecht Durer aquarelle sticks has been a constant fixture in my vertical messenger bag or travel backpack as my preferred source of convenient and seemingly ever-lasting watercolor pans. I have often shared it with my nieces, as they learn to paint with brushes and explore watercolor media. It has certainly outlasted a set of Cotman water colour half pans, that my older niece managed to use up on a single afternoon with a 1/4" wash brush and buckets of fresh water. While she has learned to blot the excess water from her brushes on a paper towel after cleaning them, she still tends to destroy conventional watercolor pans with her vigorous scrubbing (which is also why I still only let her borrow synthetic brushes for now). The aquarelle sticks have proven to be quite resilient and have survived several kid painting sessions. Unfortunately they seem to have been discontinued in the US, but they occasionally still pop up in clearances and close out sections. I have been lucky to secure several kits and tons of open stock from art supplies sales in the past couple of years.

For larger scale paintings, traditional supplies (watercolor tubes, sable rounds and synthetic wash brushes, and large water buckets) might be more efficient so long as proper care and closer supervision are taken.