drawing

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.

Giraffes!

| Erika Schnatz

This was a project I completed earlier this year for my dear friend Kayla (who is sort of famous). The girl has got some pipes. But I digress.

Kayla’s close friend just had a baby, and Kayla wanted a special card made for the family. Specifically, she wanted a family of giraffes. When I finally got down to drawing it out (I procrastinate heavily without concrete deadlines), it didn’t take me very long. I drew out one rough sketch to show Kayla:

 
The finished art looks pretty similar. I got a little crazy with Momma Giraffe’s hair, but it’s a good look for her.
And here’s what the card looks like:

All I used for this card was some Micron pens I think. Some kind of pens. I don’t quite remember.

Robots

| Erika Schnatz

As I mentioned in my last post, I was (sort of) working on a little robot art piece. Since I pulled out all the stops at the last minute and manage to finish the piece, I can triumphantly post about it.

Background:
Robo Taco (a Mexican eatery in SE Portland) put out a call for robot art on Craigslist (a totally reputable site to find art jobs) and I saved the post – thinking that I might get around to creating a piece. Usually, I don’t, but this time, dear reader, I did! I made a rough sketch of what I wanted my little robot to look like one evening, and the following evening I drew it out on nice paper, inked it and watercolor-d it, and Mod Podge-d it all together.

So here is the rough sketch:

And here is the finished product:

I put it in a frame I got from Goodwill for $2, and voila! A finished piece. It looks pretty classy in the frame, but I don’t have a picture of that yet.

Materials used: Watercolor paper, Micron pens, watercolors, colored pencils, and patterned scrapbook paper (the background)

A Lady & Her Pup

| Erika Schnatz

Here’s a quick post before I kick off my weekend:

We had a gift exchange in the AmeriCorps program I was in last year (we were a pretty tight-knit bunch) and I think there was a max of $5 you could spend since we were all broke and that sort of restriction leads to thoughtful, handmade gifts. (Which it totally did).

I had some small frames from IKEA that I wasn’t using for anything, so I spray painted them black and made some pen drawings to go inside of them. I figured most people would dig pictures of themselves (I adore a portrait of myself that was done in Paris – even more so because I’ve had to draw myself a countless number of times for self-portrait projects) and pictures of their pets. This particular lady was the first AmeriCorps member I met in Oregon because she let me and my boyfriend crash at her place for a few days before I moved into my house. She has a super cute dog named Pablo, and my then-boyfriend bonded with Pablo because he loves all dogs. I realize I’m getting off track now, so here are the pictures:

I apologize to Megan for this portrait – it does look like her but I did not crop this image well. It makes her look much less cute than she is in real life because of the way I cut her chin out of the picture. I did a much better job with Pablo:

Such a cute puppy!

I think these were drawn with Micron pens, but I can’t quite remember. Woo!

Scribbly Doodles

| Erika Schnatz

My life has been a smidgen crazy recently. I’m at the beginning of a lot of great things, and I haven’t had much time to draw as a result (I will be fixing that soon!). I found these creature doodles in a notepad and felt they warranted a post. I drew them last year during the before-school reading program I ran at an elementary school. We had a volunteer reader come in on Wednesday mornings, which gave me a bit of time to draw. Of course, the kids always wanted to see what I drew at the end of the session. Sometimes they tried to draw the same thing. It was pretty cute.

I have more of those early morning doodles stashed away, so I’ll scan them in at some point.

I love the crazy-eyed vulture-looking guy at the bottom of the page.

This doodle makes me very happy. It is the most Quentin Blake-ish thing I’ve ever drawn. (Quentin Blake did the interior illustrations for the majority of Roald Dahl’s books, for those of you who don’t have an expansive knowledge of children’s book illustrators).

These were drawn with some felt-tip pen I acquired at school. I think I pilfered a few of them from the supply cabinet because I really liked making lists and drawing with them.

Wonder Wolf!

| Erika Schnatz

I can only tenuously connect this post to the Olympics, but I’ve been thinking about the Olympics, so deal with it.

This little guy is the Wonder Wolf. As you may (or may not) know, I worked in an elementary school in Beaverton, OR for the past school year (near Nike headquarters – Olympics connection) and the school mascot was the Wonder Wolf. I actually dressed up in that costume a handful of times, unfortunately there is no photographic evidence of this…

Anyway, I made thank you cards for student volunteers and teachers at the end of the year, so I drew a cartoony little wolf. He’s got an apple to signify education, and a little cape to do awesome deeds in.

I let some of the kids color in the cards before I handed them out – I’ll have to see if I can find one to scan in and put up here.

There was no real connection to the Olympics here, although I think the Wonder Wolf would make a pretty great Olympic mascot. Better than that weird blue thing for the Atlanta Olympics in the 90s. What was that thing?

More Monkey Business…

| Erika Schnatz

To continue on the theme of my initial post, here is another card that also involves a monkey. Specifically, party monkey.

This was for my brother’s 18th birthday. You can never be too old for monkey cards.

I think I used the same photo reference for this card and the party monkey on the last card. Months and months apart. Weird.

Materials used: Watercolor (very muted), some kind of pen, Artists’ ink & little brushes

Firsties.

| Erika Schnatz

So after having this blog set up for ages, I’m finally going to start posting on here regularly. Probably.

To kick things off, here are some drawings of monkeys. They were for a high school graduation card for my brother. I should have gotten a picture of what the card looks like, but I’m a terrible archivist of my own work, so you’ll have to wait on that.

 The enthusiastic fellow above is on the front of the card…

 …and party monkey is on the inside of the card. You don’t mess around with party monkey. He parties hard.

Materials used: colored pencils, Micron brush pen (love that pen!!)

Whew. That wasn’t too terrible. More will come soon, I promise (pinky swear).