Friday, March 11, 2011

Emoticon Portraits


This is a great topic by Sam Singh!
Immediately, I pictured people with emoticon faces. As in the article about email etiquette, we sometimes rely on emoticons to relay a feeling that we cannot impress in words. But is it because emoticons are convenient, and words take too long to edit and arrange? Emoticons are a part of a universal language spoken in the virtual boundaries of email, chat rooms and other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. A single emoticon can communicate more than one meaning. ;p (the winky face) can easily follow: "I think you're a babe, ;p" or "You're too young for me, ;p". These emoticons are multi-functional! But when something is so versatile, it can be generalized and a specific notion is lost. Really, you miss out on sharing something personal like how great your day is when all you post is :). I'm not hating, I'm just pointing it out. I use emoticons, too. :p, like there.

I am going to do a series of portraits of different people (maybe 9 or 12). But instead of capturing the physical features that identify our distinctiveness, faces will be simplified to convey a universal emotion. I'm thinking of doing them in pencil and acrylic...

And lastly, here's an excellent emoticon illustration I found online today.
It's an Emoticon Love Story (by Miss Tal).


Thursday, March 10, 2011

:S


This is really fast, sorry it looks rushed but I'm about to go to work. What I'm gonna do is a series of little spot illustrations.
My concept is to take famous paintings and portray them through emoticons.
I suppose I could say it's a commentary on modern societies inability to adequately portray emotion. Also that an increase in technological capabilities has led to a decrease in traditional ability within the art community.
Mostly I thought it was funny...

I'll post some refined roughs in a few days.


Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Emoticon -Sketch





This is my sketch for the emoticon or ":S" theme. I wanted to show how little our text based relations convey. There's so much missing from them, even from phone conversations, but for many of us it is the only contact we have with some of the people in our lives. Increasingly, it's also the favored way of communicating. I remember seeing a guide to using the phone that was released right after it became a popular house hold item. it had sort of schematic and cheesy illustrations. That's what I thinking of when I was drawing this sketch, so some of that may have come through. Let me know what you think. It will be rendered in a print.

Cheers,

Jacquie

Sketch for "emoticon" theme


So I guess I'm the first with my sketch up! This is Charlie Sheen if you haven't guessed with the whole "winning!" banner. His face is supposed to be the "tongue" emoticon expression. Anywho, he used to play baseball in the past and starred in 2 baseball movies also, so baseball is still related to Charlie even if it's not in the current moment. I thought it totally works with his "winning!" phrase - relating it to a game and putting him on his own team "team Sheen". There it is!

- Kira

Thursday, March 3, 2011

March Topic


Hey everyone! It's a new month and that means a new topic.
This months topic is the emoticon,

:S 


(colon + capital S)

This week I came across an article about email etiquette and the value of using emotional cues in emails. Check it out here. Go wild with this topic: do you know someone who actually looks like this emoticon? Does the emoticon correctly convey this emotion? What is the emotion? What does it mean? Or is this nothing more than some punctuation on a keyboard? Free range everyone! Have fun with it :) (see what I did there, haha).