line art

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 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!

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!

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.