This is the first installment in my collection (o)-bjects. The original idea was to practice drawing somewhat intricate icons. Later, I came up with the idea to contrast the simplicity of the line drawings with whimsical title styling. Probably unnecessary, but I went with the idea nonetheless.
Nothing fancy about the metro-(gnome) body. The scale was created using a brush. I made a small brush and then applied the pattern to a 1-point line. I made the textured knob by modifying the procedure I found in a Lynda.com tutorial, which showed how to make a gear. I brought the gnome into Illustrator and then used Live Trace to get the painted look. It took a fair amount of cleanup to smooth out the edges and delete the background.
The original inspiration for this icon (and the series) was this ruler I found and pinned onto one of my Pintrest boards.
Image Source: The wonderful gnome picture came from Wikipedia.