A Week of Gnomes: Day Five

| Erika Schnatz
Day Five: Make something using fruits or vegetables.
This worked out well because I had some fruit that was about to spoil. I turned it into a little gnome sculpture before putting it in the compost bin.
 
 
 
Materials: apple (for body), orange (for head, beard, and eyebrows), raisins (for eyes), scrapbook paper (for hat and shoes), Sharpie marker (to draw on a little smile), hot glue gun (to put it all together)
It was fun setting up a photo shoot for him on my desk. Very happy I didn’t injure myself with the hot glue gun (I have burnt myself badly in the past, glad that didn’t happen this time!)
Tomorrow: another gnome, in a different form

A Week of Gnomes: Day Four

| Erika Schnatz
Day Four: Work with a collection (I skipped over the challenge for Day Four, but I will come back to it! This is technically the challenge from Day Five. Forgive me)
Since I am a gnome aficionado, I obviously have amassed a few:
 
The gnome in the Hawaiian shirt has come with me on a number of trips and vacations.
 
 
$3 gnome from Goodwill. I had to buy it. I keep meaning to give him a Portland makeover, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe I’ll be able to do that in a future challenge.
A page of gnome doodles. Some of these are super weird. 
Materials: Nikon SLR camera, pen
Tune in next week for some more gnome-y goodness.

A Week of Gnomes: Day Three

| Erika Schnatz
Day three: Make something with paper, but don’t draw, cut, or paste anything. 
I am not an origami expert at all, because I have a really hard time figuring out the folds based on written instructions. I first tried following the instructions here, but I had a tough time and gave up on that.
Thankfully I found this video on YouTube, and did a pretty good job of following the instructions:

 
The resulting origami gnome bookmark. It sorta looks gnomish.
Once it’s placed in a book, it does look sort of like you’re smooshing a gnome within the pages.
Here is a way cooler gnome, designed by Eric Joisel:

Materials used: scrapbook paper

One more gnome post tomorrow to round out the week!

A Week of Gnomes: Day Two

| Erika Schnatz
Day two of the 365 challenge: Use your favorite animal as inspiration for today.
My favorite animals are elephants, so somehow that inspired jousting gnomes on bitty baby elephants.
 
The linework!
 
All colored in!
A slightly nicer version of the final art.
Materials used: pen, Prismacolor markers, recycled paper, white acrylic ink & brush
More gnome action tomorrow!

A Week of Gnomes: Day One

| Erika Schnatz

I’ve decided to begin a year of creative challenges! The theme will be gnomes, because I love gnomes.

We’ll see how long I can keep this up – I’m going to do my best to stay on top of the challenges.

Day One: Make something that fits in the palm of your hand

 
 
Now I have another gnome to add to my collection! He looks pretty good on my shelf.
Materials: cardboard, Prismacolor markers, ink pen, white acrylic ink & brush
Come back tomorrow for more gnome-y goodness.

Jay and ‘Ye in SPACE!

| Erika Schnatz

My brother is a huge fan of Jay-Z and Kanye West, so I made him this ridiculous illustration as a Christmas gift:

Here is the line art of Jay-Z and Kanye
I decided to stick them in space (totally normal, right?) so I created this background with some watercolors and acrylic paint. I found a super easy tutorial on how to do this via YouTube:
Then I cut out the line art and Mod Podge’d it to outer space. Easy peasy!
This was a super fun project and it only took me a few nights. I need to start drawing more!
Materials used: Micron pens, other black pens, watercolor paints, white acrylic paint (for the stars)
More posts will be coming your way next week!

Portlandia!

| Erika Schnatz

I will be leaving Portland for a short span of time to spend the holidays with my family, but I love this quirky little city so this week’s posts are Portland-related.

This image is something I made for my friend who has recently left Portland for somewhere in Colorado, so I wanted to send her off with a slice of Portlandia. I tried to think of the most “Portland-y” thing I could think of. According to my brain that was a hipster elk/deer thing riding a bicycle past Powell’s Bookstore while drinking a PBR.

This is how it turned out:

If this image captures even a fraction of Portland’s oddness, I consider it a success.

Materials used: pens, watercolor, colored pencil

I really hope Megan got this in the mail by now and I didn’t totally spoil the surprise by posting on here…

Travel

| Erika Schnatz
Last fall I created a series of illustrations so I could throw together a stop-motion-y video for a Southwest Airlines competition to win 30 million rewards points to fly wherever I wanted. I love to travel and thought I threw together a fairly convincing and creative presentation as to why my broke AmeriCorps butt should be able to jet across the country on a whim, but they didn’t pick my video. (You can still make things right, Southwest!!!)

I was pretty bummed that I did all that work for nada, but you all can view some of the pieces I created. Maybe I’ll try to throw the video up on YouTube or Vimeo or one of those places. I wrote a children’s book-esque script to go along with the video and narrated it myself and used iMovie to edit it all together because I have lost whatever Final Cut abilities I gained in college.

I’ll shut up and show the pictures.

That’s supposed to be me. Broke and living in Portland, Oregon. BUT HAPPY!
Then I discussed driving across the country in my tiny little car to serve in AmeriCorps because I am an amazing, selfless person.
This is a really weird combination of images: Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a geyser (Old Faithful if you’d like) from Yellowstone, because I saw both of those things on my drive across the country. It’s kind of surreal and I really like how it turned out even though it makes no sense without explanation.
Hey, look! I don’t have enough money to fly anywhere and go on tropical vacations.
Like 99% of Americans.
I explained the awesome things I would do if I was able to fly all over the country for free.
You may notice that I love alliteration.
 I tried to tug at the heartstrings of the soulless marketing folks who didn’t choose my video. I talked about going back to Philadelphia to visit my family because I missed them very much. That’s a pretty accurate representation of my Pops.
Then I did a little stop motion bit of the ridiculous amount of flights I would be able to take with all those reward points. I even made the airplane look like a Southwest plane. Because I have a crazy awesome eye for detail!!!
Then I cleverly brought it full circle by using the first image, but I changed the words on the sign! Brain-explosion-inducing, I know.

So those are some pictures. I made them with patterned paper, markers, watercolors, and Mod Podge.