Speaking of my brother, I’ll be featuring a video soon where my brother, the amazingly talented Gregg Ostrom, composed and played all the music. You guys are going to love it. He plays a mean guitar. You can check him out here playing with Emily Hurd.

The Bob O Show is teaming up with The Artcast Network for a live Ustream show February 24th at 9PM Eastern. If you haven’t seen the Bob O Show before take cover, fasten your seat belts and hang on tight it’s always an adventure.
I’ll be doing a live screen capture (and trying my best not to crash the entire Ustream network….again).

See you there!

As you know from reading this blog I am a huge fan of Photoshop and use it for most of the projects I work on. Photoshop is the number one software program for professional artists of all kinds and is second to none. It is a big, big program with lots to offer and is a must for all serious digital artists. I’ve been using Photoshop for over ten years now and highly recommend it to anyone interested in producing top quality digital art.

For more info on this course, prerequisites or other continuing education courses please contact http://conted.waketech.edu/ Hope to see you there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I met with cartoonist Carlos Castellanos and artist Fian Arroyo last summer. You might know Carlos from his syndicated cartoon strip Baldo. We had a great time talking about art, marketing and all kinds of stuff. It was a really cool day… plus Carlos was kind enough to buy me lunch at 5 Guys. *Hint- if you ever want to interview me just buy me lunch at 5 Guys and I’m there.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with these mini canvases lately. Here’s one I did with my class at Jerry’s Artarama. These things are great.

Our theme for the last class was Under the Sea (I thought it would be fun to do a snail). We used acrylic paint, sharpie markers, acrylic gel medium, sand and glitter.

It’s a great little project. Super fun and super affordable…and I’m hooked. Here how it works. First we sketch our drawing onto the mini-canvas (the one shown here is 4″X5″ and goes for about 3 bucks). The next step is to paint in the image using acrylic paint. Once you’ve finished that it’s time to add some texture.

I added clear gel medium to the bottom of this little canvas. Everywhere where I wanted the to be sand I covered with gel. The trick is to really lay it on thick. Once I had it coated I took some beach sand and sprinkled it over the top of the canvas. Then I shook it over a garbage can. Anywhere there was gel the sand stuck everywhere else it shook off.

My students did the same thing. Some of them used sand, some used glitter, some used both. The gel starts out a translucent white but dries clear so its easy to see what you’re doing. Once everything is dried we outlined our characters using a sharpie permanent marker. They all looked fantastic.

You can really get creative with a project like this. I highly recommend it for kids 5 and up. Just one word of caution. Acrylic paint and sharpie marker does not wash out of clothing so make sure you wear something old or cover up with a smock. Good luck can’t wait to see what you come up with.

In the meantime I have listed The Bob O Show over on the Artcast Network . If you haven’t seen the show yet the first thing you’ll probably notice is that I like to have a lot of fun when I’m on air. I keep it loose and don’t worry too much about technical difficulties. I’m always happy to pause and answer technical questions… and as far as projects go each one gets the Super Official Bob Ostrom Studio stamp of approval before going on air.

Please check Twitter or on the Artcast Network for future broadcast announcements. See you on the next Bob O Show.

If you draw along with me please email me a copy of your drawing so I can post it on my fan art page. Have fun happy cartooning.

Classes:

• January 6th – 4-6pm For Kids ages 5-9
• February 10th - 4-6pm For Kids ages 5-9
• March 17th – 4-6pm For Kids ages 5-9
• April 14th – 4-6pm For Kids ages 5-9

For more info on the classes at Jerry’s please check out their website

Appearances: As of the moment my schedule is full. I will be adding appearances later in the year.

Videos: I am doing some more videos with the fabulous group of folks down at Burning Oak Studios this year. There are a few in production right now and we are in the process of scheduling another shoot. If you haven’t seen any of the vids yet please check them out at the Jerry’s Artarama site or you can find them on Youtube.

Ustream: For those of you who do not live in the area or would prefer to watch me on line…I’ve also added a Ustream channel. Yep, now you can watch me live on my very own Ustream channel. If you’ve ever wanted to see how a professional naps at his desk…..er works then you’re in luck…. this is the place for you.

What’s coming up: For those of you who are super-serious about learning art I’ve been working on a series of courses just for you.

Later this year I am planning to open up a subscription site with advanced classes and tutorials. These classes will not be free but they will be filled to the brim with amazing amounts of Bob Ostrom Studio artistic know how. You won’t want to miss them. I’ll have more about these at a later date.

Today I finally stopped what I was doing, put my project aside for five minutes and did a little research. Now my colors are in perfect order and I’m twice as fast as I was ten minutes ago. Turns out that rearranging your color palette in CS4 is quite easy. Who knew?

Here’s a quick tutorial on how it works…

Just click on the images below to enlarge or begin a slide show.

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