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Bird-Brained

| Erika Schnatz

Now that I’m finding myself with free time (almost too much free time – I’m still looking for summer employment because I need to work more than one day a week) I have more time to draw. I often have a hard time figuring out what I want to draw, which is why I really like Selfless Portraits – when you agree to participate, they send you the profile picture of someone else using the app on Facebook, so you get to draw someone else’s portrait. You need to do it fairly quickly too – within 48 hours.

It’s a good exercise, though I don’t know if my random stranger is going to like my portrait. I found his features to be quite birdlike (especially his hair), so I just turned him into a bird. It’s not a very representational portrait, that’s for sure:
The poor, random boy assigned to me
The resulting portrait

Pretty crazy. But it was a fun exercise. Now I’m awaiting the portrait some random stranger drew of me. Perhaps that artist has turned me into an animal as well.
Materials: Sakura pens, Prismacolor markers

Comics Jam

| Erika Schnatz

My sincerest apologies for taking forever to post. Mea culpa.

To make up for it, today you get not one, but THREE comics. Of which I drew a third. So in total I drew one comic, but I drew panels in three different comics. It’s confusing, but you’ll see what I’m talking about in a minute.

The comics jam (or whatever you want to call it) was part of the first meeting of a comics-drawing collective I started in order to coerce me into drawing more. Our first meeting had 3 members, but after seeing these amazing comics, we’re going to have more people at our next meeting. I know it.

Each of us started a 9-panel comic and assigned a rule to the comic. We had 3 minutes to draw our panel then had to switch comics after time expired. As a result, each member drew 3 panels in each of the comics.

“Fill in the Middle” by Dan Duncan, Shane Hosea & Erika Schnatz

Dan started this one. He drew the first panel, Shane drew the third panel, and I had to draw the panel in the middle. It got really crazy really fast. Notice how the truck becomes anthropomorphic halfway through the comic!

“Everybody Dies by the End” by Shane Hosea, Erika Schnatz & Dan Duncan

Shane’s rule for this comic was that everyone needed to die by the end. As you see, it didn’t take long for us to start killing off characters. Shane drew the 1st panels, I drew the middle panels, and Dan drew the 3rd panels. The Shark Transformer is a stupid idea/theme song I made up in the shower earlier that day. I’m glad it was incorporated into the comic.

“Backwardz Comix!!! (Gay Penguins)” by Erika Schnatz, Dan Duncan & Shane Hosea

I started this comic, and we drew this story backwards. I love this story so much. I drew the 3rd panels, Dan drew the center panels, and Shane drew the 1st panels. We had to pause drawing for a minute or two because I couldn’t stop laughing after the “Timothy! Look at my new magic trick” panel.

I can’t wait to do this again. It was crazy fun.

Friday Afternoon Comics: Drunk Bear

| Erika Schnatz
Your bear drinks beer!
A bit of back story about this image – I started using a free online program to refresh my Spanish a few weeks ago. The program’s called Duolingo, and it’s quite an excellent learning tool, especially since it’s totally free. One of the most entertaining parts of re-learning Spanish on Duolingo is translating the sometimes-wacky sentences they give you.
I’m not sure when I’ll ever need this particular line, but it makes learning a bit more fun.
Materials: pen

DJ Ladle

| Erika Schnatz

DJ Ladel is “ladling out the hits!”

This is a dumb little sketch based on a dumb response I gave during a comedy game show I participated in last night.

My apologies for the lack of posts. I haven’t fallen off the earth, but I’ve gotten really into learning Spanish recently. I also have a short attention span and I’ve been out of town for the past two weekends.

I pinky swear there will be some good stuff popping up here next week.

Week of Lincoln: Day Four

| Erika Schnatz

I’ve realized that posting every weekday is not something that is ever going to happen. I just can’t manage my time that well. But here’s the fourth post for this week, which is pretty rad.

This Friday Afternoon Comic is half Abe Lincoln, half Valentine’s Day-lovin’. The idea for this popped into my head a few days ago, so I’m glad I had the time to draw it today.

Enjoy it lovebirds/Lincoln enthusiasts!