Digital Art, The Vocabulary of Comics, and Chris Coleman

icon drawn on Adobe Illustrator by me

Digital art entails characters and icons that are drawn out on the computer in programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Michael Salter of the University of Oregon is an artist of this profession. He started out as a designer for multiple surf companies but later became a professor at the University of Oregon and started displaying his digital artwork in art galleries. During his lecture I attended he discussed the idea of the character and icons. The idea of the character is everywhere, there are characters in advertisements, posters, comic books, boxes and many other things that we see everyday. Characters are icons that often try to influence to buy something, or that are just totally random and have no meaning. Some of these icons we can see plastered all around town such as graffiti and random posters, and some are meant for us to question. As Michael Salter said that the logic behind many of these characters and icons don’t really make sense but they still make art. The great thing about the character and icon is that they don’t need to make sense to be art and because they don’t really have a meaning behind them people can guess the meaning or make up something that is meaningful to them. Characters and icons are simple, and often times less is more. The picture is the meaning and is the only thing that shows the meaning, it isn’t spelled out.

            To me a comic book is a bunch of pictures put together to tell a story, kind of like the saying a picture is worth a thousand words. In a comic, the pictures set up every aspect of the story it is trying to tell. They represent the setting, the characters and everything that is the essence of the story being told. In other words the pictures are the most important part of a comic. The idea that we relate to these pictures, of people who barely look like us is a profound idea looked at in “The Vocabulary of Comics” by Scott McCloud. He discusses many ideas in his comic book about how people react and how people recognize the pictures that we see in comics.

The idea that when we cartoon objects, we focus on specific details rather than eliminating details is very true. As we make the cartoon version of whatever we are drawing we take away many details to make it more recognizable. I feel we take away these details also to make it easier to relate to the object. Say it’s a cup of coffee; everyone would know a cartoon drawing of a cup of coffee, if the cup were simple most people would be able to relate to it. When you add detail, such as what kind of coffee, not everyone can relate because of differing opinions. When we lose the distinct details that differentiate between different types of products we can start to make a “universally” relatable drawing.

            This relates to the happy face. We all know that a circle with two dots and a line makes a face. Everyone around the world will recognize that. When we look at the simplest cartoon face it makes me feel like drawing is a universal language. Most people will understand drawing of a cat and dog and will instantly know what it is. No matter how simple the drawing most people with understand. I believe that pictures and drawings are the stepping-stones towards a language that everyone can understand, and I think that this is profound. Drawings are their own language that everyone can understand, and comics are books that are universally understood as well.

            An example of an artist who does digital art is Chris Coleman. He makes physical art, digital art, sculpture and video. He makes a lot of art that is random and maybe doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. Such as a series of animated videos that show a house with some sort of flashing light in front of it called “My House is not My House”. The artist has a meaning behind it but it’s so plain, simple and ambiguous that viewers can come up with their own meaning behind it. Coleman uses his art to spread messages, kind of like a universal language. The same message isn’t necessarily spread to everyone, but a meaningful message is still sent. Everyone understands a message, so it’s essentially a universal language.