Deadline extended until this Wednesday, so get drawing kids!

Since I do not check my Facebook page often, I had missed the announcement for this neat Staedtler Mars Lumograph drawing contest that will end on Wednesday 9. So if you are up to it, sharpen those pencils and get cracking since you still have a few hours left in the day boys and girls. The Mars Lumograph pencils are the neat artist pencils that we used in our cartooning classes. This Manga Wizard was drawn on the Maruman Croquis S163 pocket sketchbook and then added to the template below.
These were my two eleventh hour entries. Hope you take this speed sketching challenge and come up with a couple of your own now that you have another day to come up with your designs.

Next Speed Sketching Demo at Jo-Ann Open House

My next Manga Cartooning Class Demo is scheduled from noon to 3:00 pm this coming Saturday 12 at the Jo-Ann Store Open House, Promenade At Naples Center, 6428 Hollywood Blvd, Naples, FL 34109-2013, phone (239) 594-0389.Stop by if you would like to have your free cartoon portrait drawn, learn about my art materials recommendations for budding artists, and check out the mini comics and the pop-up card samples that we would be making in the corresponding introductory 3-hour session (Kids' Art & Drawing 101 and 102). Suggested materials to get started sketching and drawing regularly:
- Sakura Pigma Sensei drawing kit: my top pick for a comprehensive drawing kit with four different sizes of pigmented pens, 0.7 mm mechanical pencil, and soft eraser.
- Canson Fanboy manga papers: the 8.5" X 11" sketchbook or a 9" X12" drawing pad would be a good starter choice.
- Crayola Super Tips markers (set of 20 or 50) or Faber Castell Crip Colour Marker pens (set of 10 or 20) provide a nice starter color palette with water-based washable inks.
- Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens Manga sets would be recommended options for intermediate to advance students.
- Prismacolor Double ended markers sets (Manga and Grays) would be recommended options for intermediate to advance students.
- A nice soft 2B or 4B artist graphite pencil or 2 mm leadholder loaded with B-2B leads
- sketchbooks of different sizes for use at home and on-the-go/plenty of 8.5" X 11" copy paper for warm up doodles and initial experiments.
For the Kids' Art & Drawing 101 Basic Principles session: the Sakura Pigma Sensei drawing kit, a Canson Fanboy manga sketchbook or drawing pad, and a set of markers would suffice.
For Kids' Art & Drawing 102 Pop-Cards session: pack of 8.5" X 11" white card stock, child safe scissors (or a EK Success Cutter Bee scissors for older students that can handle them safely), glue stick (glitter glue pens are a nice enhancement option), preferred drawing and coloring tools (same as listed above for Drawing 101). Other coloring options: Derwent watercolor pencils, Faber Castell watercolor crayons or the 12 gel sticks with brush set.

Family Art Time Photo Journal

At a recent family gathering, the kids enjoyed some creative activities with a variety of art materials.
Random marker doodles done as a warm up exercise.
Castle doodle warm up.
Ooh, a metallic silver marker pen!

Mermaids doodling practice.
Nicole's marker drawing enhanced with a Pentel Outline Silver/Green pen.

Coloring a couple of Power Ranger-style characters with Faber Castell watercolor crayons.
Since mom did not want any watercoloring activity at this gathering, we left the crayon marks dry.
Trying out a Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen in her marker coloring.
Leaving the plastic wrap around the clipboard makes it easier to wipe it clean of any stray marker coloring.
Drawing a background for a pop-up card.
Mateo discovering the joy of stamping.
Nicole's first original design for a pop-up card with whimsical imaginary bird creature.
2, 4, and 6 years old artists enjoying a quite time stamping, drawing, and coloring.
Camila focused in her marker coloring.
All done.

Another successful Elementary School Cartoooning Course completed

For our final class contest at an Immokalee Elementary School, we loaded this table with unfinished pop-up card projects, blank mini-comic booklets, coloring templates, and a selection of drawing and coloring tools. The students were given the options of finishing their works in progress, creating their own original mini comics, or coloring one of my templates in order to be considered for a prize.
While the students worked on their projects during the two class periods, I managed to draw a cartoon portrait for pretty much everybody attending this class.
I would estimate that about half of the drawing requests were fantasy-style cartoons and comicbook hero-style illustrations.
And the other half were more like conventional portraits that depicted regular school activities.
This student drawing inspired by his cartoon portrait was inked with a 0.3 mm Sakura Pigma Sensei pen.
Some students chose to draw their own creations from scratch while others picked a pre-drawn coloring template to color with markers or watercolor pencils.
In the last 30 minutes of class, we gathered all the finished contest entries, and our two judges(the adults that assisted in class this day) selected the students that earned one of the fun prizes available: 3 sets of Sushi puzzle erasers, a set of 10 Crayola fine tip markers, and a couple of Bakugan Deka Metal Gate cards packs.
Several students really embraced the Crayola watercolor pencils as their preferred coloring tools in the later part of the course, so they really proved to be a good choice for expanding our selection of class art materials.

So High School students like to have their cartoon portraits drawn too

After conducting a docent tour of the Princess Diana: Dresses of Inspiration for a particularly attentive and well-behaved group of students (now I know what to expect from High School JROTC students), we toured the second floor of The von Liebig Art Center and stopped at the library to draw a few souvenir cartoon portraits for the kids to take home.Since the library was not being used by any other patrons at the time, the group members had plenty of room to spread out and the freedom to chat and make helpful design suggestions for their peers' drawings while patiently waiting for their turn to get drawn. When my preferred 0.6 mm Sakura Pigma Sensei pen started going dry halfway, I switched to the 1.0 mm nib pen which provides greater coverage at a faster speed but does not allow for very small detailing on the fly. If Sakura does not start offering these two pen nib sizes in open stock soon, I am going to end up swamped with spare of 0.7 mm mechanical pencils and the other manga drawing kit components that do not get used up as fast. I really should look for an alternative cartooning event pen among my other pigmented pen sets, but the comfortable feel on most papers of the Pigma Sensei plastic nibs coupled with their smooth ink flow while speed sketching can be almost addictive (well it is to me).The students were quite imaginative with their ideas for their sketches, so we had a wide variety of fun interesting themes to draw in addition to the usual princess, mermaid, and ninja cartoon portrait requests. Quite a few wanted to be drawn as a favorite animal, for I recall sketching a couple of students as an octopus and panda bear respectively. Hope some of the students will be inspired to take up some pencils and start drawing themselves after seeing how easily and quickly their ideas could take form on paper with just some regular sketching practice. I really enjoyed the experience hosting this group, and their positive reaction to the cartooning process tells me that we are on the right tract to plan an after-school manga cartooning course for high school students for the next year.
I probably speed sketched about 35 cartoon portraits and special request drawings during 75 minutes. Thus each drawing took about 2-2.5 minutes to complete on average. By the time we were done everybody seemed pretty happy with their souvenir drawings of their visit to The von Liebig Art Center. Heartfelt thanks to Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) Paul Garrah for sending me these picture files that I used to illustrate this post(for it can be a quite challenge draw and photograph myself at the same time).

Students' Mini Comic Covers Gallery

The students' first attempts at creating their own mini comics.