My sketch blog has relocated!

Just a quick note that I've incorporated my sketch blog on my website now, so newer stuff can be found there: www.erikaschnatz.com! Check it out if you want to!

Cute animals with ereaders

The digital department manager at Ooligan Press is the reason I've drawn many cute animals over the past year. She's the reason my silly animal drawings are all over the Ooligan Press website, so when she requested some kitchy animals for her instructional ebook guide, I was happy to oblige. Without further ado, may I present cute animals with ereaders!

Alex Trebek, Omnipresent God

I usually save my comics for Thursday afternoons, but since there was a new Celebrity Jeopardy sketch this weekend on SNL (!!!), here's an autobiographical comic about the time I tried out for Jeopardy in sixth grade. Please note that my head is full of cats and pizza and not the quadratic equation.

Added bonus: the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch I mentioned earlier!

Sword + Dagger Logo Design

I was recently contacted by two lovely graduates of my publishing program -- they had combined forces to start a publishing services company called Sword and Dagger. They had a super cool name and some fabulous design inspiration to go along with it. It didn't take me much time at all to create some logo ideas:

They liked number 9 best, and wanted to make sure the sword and dagger were represented in the design, and they wanted to see how the design would look on a black background. So I put together the following:

The final designs are below. It was a fun project that was a nice break from what I normally do, and I can't wait to see how the designs look in print!

You can check out their website here: http://swordanddagger.wix.com/publishingservices

Thursday Afternoon Comics: Swine in Space

It's time for another edition of Thursday afternoon comics!

I drew this one pager over the summer for a comics class, but then it took me forever to scan it in. Anyway, enjoy "Swine in Space"!

Happy Groundhog's Day!

These groundhogs are proper gents. I remember Groundhog's Day being a much bigger deal when I was little, but I also grew up in and around Pennsylvania, so it might be more popular around there?

Jazzy T-Shirt

Let's get this sketch blog back up and running!

Here's a t-shirt design I drew for a jazz-related project at Ooligan Press:

It was deemed a little too folksy for a jazz t-shirt, and the style wasn't quite right for the target demographic, but it's a nice little composition. Someone brought up Michael Cera when talking about the design, which is a compliment of the highest order for me. I loved Juno. :)

The black and white drawing is below:

Comics!

This summer I took a short form comics class with Shannon Wheeler (creator of Too Much Coffee Man). My Topsy comic went over really well with the class, so my peers decided I was going to draw the cover. This is the result:

Handlettering and patterns are fun! I need to do more of both.

Happy Birthday to Me!

On October 26th I will be turning 26! Golden birthday!

Birthday Cat! 'Cause it's almost my birthday!

Bonus drawing of Mr. Snorkers, a very classy pig. I would like to imagine that Birthday Cat and Mr. Snorkers would be great party guests.

Portrait of Poe from the Waist Down

Last winter break I thought, "Why don't I try to draw a portrait of someone from the waist down?" Here is the result of that idea. 

Edgar Allan Poe from the waist down. Fitting 'cause Halloween is right around the corner, and Poe has got to be America's creepiest poet, right?

Cat Wedding

I went to my first non-family weddings this summer. Here's a card I made for my friends Liz and Travis. (Liz is a superb illustrator - you can check out her wonderful cut paper illustrations here: http://lizabethgoss.com/)

I'm clearly have a cat-drawing addiction.

Animal Doodles

I made a halfhearted attempt to get onboard the #inktober train this month. Managed to produce 3 drawings so far, based on twitter @Daily_Doodle prompts.

#cowboycat

#matadormouse

#teachertortoise

2014 Marching Band Tee Shirt

It's that time of the year again, my one regularly commissioned project! I've been doing the tee shirt for my high school marching band for the past few years, and it's been a fun challenge since the theme is completely different from year to year. To check out some of my previous tee designs, click here

This year's theme was "Goddess of Fire" and I was able to use 2 colors (plus the tee shirt color). Fancy!

The '70s psychedelia-inspired design (I looked at lots of music posters).

An idea of what the front and back of the tee shirt should look like. 

Topsy's Shocking End

Bad news: It's been over a month since I've posted.

Good news: I'll have brand new full-page comics to post over the next few weeks! I've been taking a short-form comics class with Shannon Wheeler (creator of Too Much Coffee Man) and it's gotten me back into drawing on a daily basis. I've learned lots of fun and exciting things, like how to letter a comic.

Our first week's assignment was a historical comic. I have a soft spot for elephants, so I wrote and drew a comic about Topsy, the elephant that Thomas Edison electrocuted in his "War of the Currents" with Tesla.

Topsy's story has been getting around - a whole episode of Bob's Burgers was based on it. Below is the main song from the episode, "Electric Love," covered by Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields - so many science-y references!) and Kenny Mellman.

More plants!

Here are a few more Pacific Northwest fauna drawings for the new Ooligan site:

A pine branch!

Another pine branch with more pine!

Strawberries and leaves.

I like how these drawings turned out. I need to work on more art that isn't so cartoony.

Plants!

Cute animal drawings does not a website make, so I needed to do some Pacific Northwest flora drawings to balance out all the cartoony animals.

A fern. These are relaxing to draw.

Another fern. Also relaxing.

Trillium. There is a lake named after this plant in Oregon.

Cute Animals!

More drawings for the new Ooligan Press website. Who knows what our webmaster is going to do with all of these, but she's brilliant, so I think these drawings are in safe hands. The internet pretty much runs on cute animals, so it makes sense to fit them wherever we can on the site. Can't wait to post screenshots of the site when it goes live!

Beaver!

Chipmunk!

Fish! They're supposed to be salmon, but I think they're probably not very accurate. Also, it's hard to make some cute because most of them are hella ugly (especially salmon).

Tired huskies. The faces are kind of weird, but whatevs.

A raccoon for the 404 page. It just makes sense.

Nature Drawings

Here are a few images I've put together for the redesign of the Ooligan Press website:

Branch!

Leaves!

Log!

Pinecones! (Really hard to draw!)

I don't quite know what our webmaster is going to do with all of these images, but I'm glad it's getting me to draw more. I have a few more drawings to crank out soon, so those should be posted here soon.

Dam Good Books

Here's another little thing I whipped up for Ooligan Press:

I offered a beaver-less option if the press wanted to be a bit more high-brow, but I'm happy to see the little guy made the cut.

Ooligan Press is putting together "Dam Book Bundles" - basically a collection of 3 titles that our press has published. The titles are offered at a discount because you're buying multiple books. It's a pretty sweet deal, and you can check it out here if you want to buy some excellent titles from a student-run independent press. Check it out for the puns alone!

Even More Dragons

Because I have some drawing abilities, I couldn't just design a book and be done with it. No, I had to illustrate the book as well. I left things to the last minute (as usual), so I only had time to work up some line drawings. I'm content with the way they came out - I think the quality of the line in these drawings compliments the rest of the book's design well enough.

Here's some handlettering I did for the title page (of course I had to put spikes and a tail on the "g").

I love this sleeping dragon drawing.

Chill dragon is also one of my favorites.