I recently stumbled on these learn to draw videos and DD is enjoying them very much! Just a heads up, they are in Japanese but the whole thing is visual so language is irrelevant. We watch the item through once, and then pause through the repeat step by step. Thought some other parents here might appreciate as well.
http://www.youtube.com/user/oojioo?feature=watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PotGCU7PepY&list=UUkk1ggZGS7PBgCbleFI8w0g&feature=player_detailpage
Those videos look great, TmT! I can’t wait to show them to Ella tomorrow. She loves to draw! We are currently using Draw Write Now and Art Atelier on top of weekly Drawing and Painting lessons. Also, I just found out last week that she has learned to read in Japanese (hiragana)! So these videos will be even more fun for her!
Thanks for sharing! 
Oh aweßome! I am excited! :yes:
The Japanese is a bonus! Thank you.
We have been through most of the draw write now books we have and we like home art school too. The girls are having great success with the how to draw type books we have.
Oh and a friend told me about a great drawing technique. Find a outline picture ( I recommend a horse or a dragon because they always turn out wonky like a donkey!) turn it upside down and cover it with another sheet of paper. Reveal the picture only a centre metre at a time and draw just the lines you see revealed each time you move the paper up revealing more of the picture underneath. The technique teaches kids to draw what they see, rather than what they THINK they see. That alone makes a huge difference in drawing skills, but they will also learn to pay attention to line.
Aangeles, I have mentioned this elsewhere on this board but in case you have not
seen, I adore the dr moku apps for learning katakana and hiragana. They make it so easy! So she probably will learn katakana in like a minute with it haha. They are working on a kanji app but don’t know when it will be released. Until then, I found the Kanji Pictographix to be the next best thing (app or book.) I am just learning all of this myself, but I am really looking for a strong visual program to learn bushu first because I read about how foundational it is to learn many others. Do you follow The Hirgana Mama blog? That and KanjiDamage are helping me muddle through all of this. 
What do you use to practice writing characters? I was thinking the crayola self inking paint brushes would work but there is probably a better option I am unaware of.
Manda, we’ll have to try that technique. Glad they could help you out!
Just downloaded the free versions of the dr moku apps to try them out. To be honest, I have not really been trying to teach her Japanese - we have been focusing on Mandarin, Tagalog, Spanish, and French since I thought 5 languages was the limit if we want to learn each one really well. I did make Japanese resources and materials available to her; of these, her favorites are the Wink to Learn DVDs, Hayao Miyazake anime movies, my first Hiragana book, and the Mindsnacks Japanese app (Mindsnacks for other languages are pretty good too!) We have also not started writing characters yet. My plan is to start with writing Chinese characters, and for these I am going to use traditional workbooks which I had used in grade school. Oh wait… Are you talking about teaching calligraphy and what brushes to use? I have not even thought about that yet. I learned Chinese calligraphy in fifth-grade and used the traditional Chinese calligraphy brushes, so that is probably what I will do for her as well. From there, I think it should then be relatively easy for her to transition to writing Japanese, as the characters have far fewer strokes than traditional Chinese characters.
Ummm aangeles I really don’t think you will need to teach her to write Japanese at all. I have a feeling she will just know how to do it. She has clearly found the links between Chinese and Japanese already, and the links between on alphabet and another. I would be very surprised if she doesn’t automatically make the connection between the Japanese text and her own Japanese handwriting. Especially since it won’t be the first one she learns to write. Even my kids who don’t read a second language can draw the Japanese characters they know accurately. I believe you really only need to teach handwriting once…teaching them to be particular with stroke order and shape accuracy. Maybe adding in stroke thickness once you get to calligraphy in Chinese perhaps. If you left a Japanese handwriting practice book lying around I bet she would have it mastered in no time.
Off to find a “mind snack” 
Thank you again TeachingMyToddlers! This video is great and I have copied the url to my list of activities for a bit older child