Pens for Drawing Cartoon Characters

Series Summary

Drawing is a visual art which makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, and various metals. A cartoonist, however, is someone that specializes in drawing cartoons. A cartoonist traditionally sketches the picture out roughly in pencil before going over the sketches in black ink.

The great thing about drawing cartoon characters is that there's no limit to the style in which you draw them. The artistic freedom is yours to have fun with. In this free video series, our expert will show you how to get started, though, with step-by-step instructions that will teach you how to plan, sketch, and ultimately draw your very own cartoon characters. You'll learn how to create an outline, what pens to use, and how to draw your character's eyes, nose, mouth, and everything else. Whether you're serious about cartooning or just want a fun new hobby, look to these videos to learn a great art form!

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Danny Page and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. In this series I'm going to teach you how to draw a basic cartoon characters. Alright, so starting out, the blank page. When there's absolutely nothing down on paper and there's nothing but your ideas in your head and you're staring at the page trying to figure out to make your ideas a reality or maybe you just feel like goofing around and just sketching and seeing what ideas flow from the tip of your pen on to the page. So in this instance though, the first thing you're going to want to do is choose a type of pen that we're going to be sketching with. In this case I'm going to be using the fine tipped Sharpie which is good for these types of demonstrations cause you can really see the ink pretty well, but I will tell you though if you're using a sketch pad that you have a lot of precious drawings on it's probably a good idea to use something a little bit less powerful because this will bleed like crazy through the pages. So either make sure you have a safety page blocking the current page you're drawing on from the other pages or use a pen that's not quite as crazy powerful. This is the one I'll be using for the demonstration. However, most folks when their sketching early ideas out prefer to go with something a little less permanent like a pencil with an eraser. The eraser can obviously help you change little mistakes that you're bound to make as you're crafting your idea and then some folks, more professional folks, who are little less afraid of making mistakes go for something a little bit more fine tip. This is also a Sharpie, but the tip is much more fine and you can get in there and really make some, a lit bit more intricate details. Something a little less broad and these are more for people who've been doing this for a while and can sketch and the ideas flow freely. So this one is a little less safe but a little bit more detailed. But for these purposes I’m going to go with this one, the broad Sharpie and this one's kind of cool too. It's retractable. You don't see those too often. You can pick them up at any local Target or Wal-Mart. Alright, so here we go."