Caricature Stand at the 15th Annual Downtown Naples New Year’s Art Fair - Photo Gallery

Had a great time drawing Manga-style caricatures at the 15th Annual Downtown Naples New Year’s Art Fair earlier this month, and finally got around going through the batch of photos taken by Cuti (my super talented photographer from Chicago).
Patiently waiting in line.I was pleasantly surprised by family members that drove from the East Coast to check out my caricature booth on the first day of the Art Fair.

"Yaay finally my turn!"
"I want to be a Ninja Mermaid!"
Let's get started.
While I had tons of pens and tools at my disposal, I ended drawing most caricatures with my reliable Sakura Pigma Sensei 0.6 mm and 1.0 mm pens.
Oh boy! the tail scales always take quite a bit of time to render.
Almost done. So that's the view looking over my shoulder. The Kanji on the back of my lab coat reads "Dragon" in Chinese.
Good thing I left enough room for writing the name in bubble letters at the end.
Starting work on the the Fairy Mermaid request.

Couple of satisfied customers.
It was a great experience. Thanks again Cuti for taking these great pictures, for I seldom get the chance to photograph the drawing process and the finished caricatures at similar events.

Sharpie Pen Retractable Fine Point test doodles

Thanks to John from the PencilWrap.com for holding the “Anti-Hoarding Giveaway”, for now I finally got around testing the sketching potential and performance of these Sharpie Pen Fine Point retractable pens.
While the original fine point Sharpie Pens were made in Japan, this retractable version was made in China judging from its pocket clip.
Initial test doodles on 67 lb card stock.
A few test doodles on Hammermill Copy Plus 20 lb paper.
Doodling some of my favorite subjects: a team of ninjas and Alien/Predator/Ninja team up.
The Sharpie Pen Retractable Fine Point performed quite well for freehand drawing, and it would make a fine addition to your sketching kit. The water-resistant ink dried quickly preventing smearing and could be easily colored with watercolors. The fine point designed for everyday writing is also quite suited for creating detailed sketches and building a pen illustration gradually. While a tad disjointed from the headache that I'm trying to shake off, here is the sketching demo video I made with the Sharpie pens and a Rhodia DotPad. Recommended.

Sketching with Pentel Wow! retractable ball point pens

Came across these carded sets of Pentel Wow! retractable colored ball point pens on clearance at the local Staples. Fifty cents for a carded set of five pens made them an easy choice for the incentive prize pool that I use in my after school drawing classes. The pens were made in India according to the back of the card.
Initial doodle tests on a piece of card stock. Personally I find the purple more effective given its hue and contrast while the pink and green just do not do it for me (guess a pink pen is just hard to pull off for a guy). I would have preferred a warmer green, but I guess that it would also make it less legible.
A few ninja doodles drawn on Hammermill Copy Plus 20 lb paper. Found that these pens required greater pressure to lay down their line strokes while sketching, but their ball points tips still skipped a bit resulting in a messier appearance. The greater force applied to the pens also caused the thin paper to curl at the corners. On the plus side, the triangular barrel grip makes it quite comfortable to hold for long writing sessions.
This close up shot reminded me of why I seldom grab or use a ball point pen. Their thicker ink tends to clump into ugly blobs from time to time and the ball point actually skips at my regular sketching speed unlike gel pens or liquid ink pens. Keeping in mind that they are value-priced writing instruments first, I was just curious to test their performance as sketching tools.
They certainly would not be my first choice for doodling given their tendency to skip and to produce random ink blobs. While the Pentel Wow! BK440 ballpoint pens might be adequate writing tools and capable of some light sketching duty in a pinch, they are all going straight to my bag of classroom prizes. They work fine for note-taking, and the kids will probably enjoy their off-beat colors (well at least the girls might).

Schmincke Horadam Aquarell Set Spotlight

My latest Cheap Joe's order arrived a couple of days ago.
Just couldn't pass up this special promotion item at further discounted clearance pricing: a set of 12 full pans for the price of a half pans set.
10 of the paints are single pigments for cleaner paint mixes, and two convenience multiple pigment colors: permanent olive and sepia brown.
The holding rack could securely grip up to 18 full pans with its metal brackets, and the metal box features plenty of mixing wells beneath.
The bottom of the box features a thumb ring for holding the metal set while painting.
This paint set was manufactured in Germany.
Freshly unwrapped watercolor full pan.
The back of the pan wrappers featured the toxicity caution notices and reminded me of fortune cookie messages. The yellow ochre pan got some of the wrapping stuck to the top of the paint cake, and the sepia brown cake had to be reattached to its plastic pan with some gum arabic solution. After moistening and wiping off the paper glue residue from the yellow ochre pan, we were ready for some testing fun.
Painting test set up.
Reference color chart painted on the included insert card.Just in case that the reference color card gets lost, I took the precaution of writing the color name and pigment information of each paint on the bottom of each plastic pan with a permanent marker. That information should come in handy when replacing a color or customizing the palette choices.
Relative size comparison with traditional round brushes and wider body waterbrushes.
The metal box is large enough to accommodate 6 additional full pans or a couple of wide body barrel waterbrushes and medium round brush.
Color doodle and reference chart painted on a Cachet watercolor book.
Used my trusted Sakura Pigma Sensei 06 pen to quickly sketch this waterproof ninja coloring outline.
Scrapped coloring video: applying some color with a Escoda 1212 #6 round brush. The Exacompta sketchbook pages accepted the light washes exceptionally well with minimal warping. The Schmincke full pans wet easily releasing generous washes with a large sable brush. The trade-off would be that their metal box has a much larger footprint than the Bijou box for example. Thus it is naturally more suitable for larger working areas and creating bigger paintings.
Dry reference palettes and color sketch. The Schmincke Horadam Aquarell Metal Set would make a nice addition to any watercolor kits collection.

Yet Another Ninja Sketching Demo Video

Ninja Speed Sketching Demo Video. This video is dedicated to Gabriel who reportedly watched the previous ninja video several times already.
Step 1: quick figure skeleton lay down with a 3B pencil.
Step 2: drawing with a Sakura Pigma Sensei 0.6 mm pen.
Step 3: coloring with a waterbrush and Sakura Koi watercolors.

Now go and sketch and color a few ninjas of your own. Hajime!

My Planner for 2011: The 3.5" X 5.5" Moleskine Weekly Notebook Diary/Planner

While not really a sketchbook, I am pretty sure I'll end up doodling a bit on my new Moleskine Weekly Notebook diary/Planner 2001 that I picked up at Borders.
This particular planner was made in China.
The 4 sheets of fun adhesives labels included in its back pocket along with a tabbed pages insert.
My new planner on top of last year's for size comparison. I would have preferred to get the larger size again, but I took too long in picking one up. I do like its layout of having the whole week on the left page and a ruled page on the right for more detailed notes.
While this small size planner might not have been my first choice, I think it will work alright with a micro tip gel pens like the Pentel Slicci 0.3 mm. The 0.7 mm Uni-ball Signo-Bit pen laid down a rather thick line for such a small page size, so I think I will have to stick to 0.4 mm pen tips or smaller pens for writing in this compact planner. While featuring less writing and doodling room, it should provide greater portability. Might just need to revisit my short-hand code from the college years. We shall see.