First you hear the footsteps, then he leans back and roars that terrible roar. The whole town goes crazy. Little army dudes run in every direction. Wait, little army dudes don’t fire those tiny rockets at him you’ll just make him mad. If you make him mad he’ll use his atomic fire breath on you…..ahhhhhhhhh!!!! too late!!!

I always had a blast drawing those scenes. I thought you guys might too. So here’s a little 10 step drawing lesson I put together.  Have fun.

If you want to get your very own copy you can find them at Jerry’s Artarama or on the Jerry’s websitesite, on Amazon and also on Ebay… How cool is that?!

I had so much fun yesterday I decided to do a little photo shoot of my own here at Bob Ostrom Studio. Here are a few pics. Enjoy.

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I’ve been messing around with Google Docs a bit lately and decided to try it for a tutorial I built a while back. The original was built in HTML and took forever. It was a ton of work and after I posted it I found a bunch of errors, which of course was heartbreaking.  I’d put off fixing it for the longest time because it was such a monumental time task.

Last week I was playing around with Google Docs and decided to check out the presentation option.  Rebuilding this tutorial seemed like the perfect guinea pig. It ended up taking me just over an hour and was very simple to figure out (if you’ve ever built a Power Point presentation then you’re all set. If not, don’t worry…  you’ll get the hang of it in no time flat). Google saved me a ton of time, was a piece of cake to use and best of all, I did it all for free. If you haven’t checked out Google Docs yet you can check it out here. If you build something cool and would like to share it please post a link in the comments section. Look forward to seeing what you come up with.

• Click Here to view the tutorial.
• Click Here to download the Super Official Bob Ostrom Studio Adobe Illustrator brushes I used in this tutorial.

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.

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.

I started out with a pencil sketch and then outlined it with marker. I usually wait until the end to do my ink but I had this cool new non-bleed sharpie marker that I was dying to try out. After the line art was done I began adding light washes of blue, green and purple to the background. Once I had a basic idea of how I wanted the light and shadow to go I went over the colors again this time darkening and adding deeper tones. The basic idea with watercolors is to work in washes, gradually building as you go.

I added a little Dr. Martines Die to my watercolors to help punch up the color. I used Rose-Carthame and Magenta to pump up my reds and then added a little Cerulean Blue to help out the background. You have to be careful with Dr. Martins. The pigments can be difficult to reproduce (especially with a cheap scanner like mine). Since this piece was just for fun I wasn’t too worried about reproduction.

The trick to working with Dr Martin’s dies is to add them sparingly. A little bit of die goes a LONG way. They can easily overpower your artwork if you don’t thin them down a bit. On the other hand they punch up your colors nicely and can really put down a smooth wash. Oh, and one last note of caution: These dies can fade over time if exposed to direct sunlight. If you take good care of your artwork though the vibrant colors will last a long time.  I have a few Magic School Bus pieces I did way back in 1995 hanging in my office and they still look great after all these years.

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